Are there multiple languages ​​in sign language?

Answer

That depends on what you mean by “sign language”. Everyone can “speak in gestures”: you point to something in your environment, you portray concrete things or you point to something that can be associated with certain feelings (eg heart = “love”, head = “mind”). These kinds of gestures are more or less universal, because all people, regardless of the language they speak, can understand them. Linguists speak of “sign language” when people use gestures to communicate instead of words (spoken or written). Such a sign language, like any other language, has a whole arsenal of signs with a certain meaning and grammar. These signs in turn can be further broken down into smaller elements, comparable to the letters (which stand for sounds) and larger units in ge-bar-en-language. Despite the fact that certain gestures are undoubtedly universal, there are different sign languages, just as there are different spoken languages: e.g. American Sign Language, British Sign Language, Japanese Sign Language, etc. Just like spoken languages , sign languages ​​often belong to a larger language family. For example, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese Sign Language belong to one family, so that communication between users of those three sign languages ​​is easier than, for example, between users of American and Japanese Sign Language.