Language desk
< March 27	<< Feb \| March \| Apr >>	March 29 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

March 28

Do sign languages borrow from each other?

I would think that it’s certainly possible for a sign language to borrow a word from another, but I am unconscious of examples. I’m not extremely involved in sign languages, though. --66.190.99.112 (talk) 21:06, 28 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Like other languages, sign languages evolve in similar ways, and have divergent histories, etc. The rules of linguistics that spoken languages follow are not exempt from sign languages. Interestingly, American Sign Language share a common history with French Sign Language but not with British Sign Language; thus deaf Americans have a higher degree of mutual intelligibility with a similarly deaf person from Paris than they would someone from London. Two of the largest families of sign languages are BANZSL (Commonwealth countries) and the French Sign Language family. There are many other sign language families. You can find more about them at List of sign languages; Wikipedia has a pretty comprehensive coverage of many sign languages, follow some links and see what you learn! --Jayron 32 00:57, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Although there are loan words between dissimilar sign languages, for instance the ASL sign for "tree" [1] is identical to the BSL sign for "tree" [2] displacing an earlier British sign, although I can't find a reference to support this. Alansplodge (talk) 01:52, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not exactly a reference for the above, but you may be interested in Primary Movement in Sign Languages: A Study of Six Languages. Alansplodge (talk) 02:10, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]