American Sign Language

Also known as ASL, Ameslan, ASLic, Visual American Sign Language

sign language used predominately in the United States

AI overview

American Sign Language is a visual language used with the hands, face, and body that is predominately used in the United States, primarily by Deaf and hard-of-hearing people to communicate with each other and with hearing people. It matters because it enables full linguistic and social participation for millions of people who are Deaf or hard-of-hearing in American society.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Wikidata facts

Instance of: modern language
Subclass of: French Sign Language family
Country: Canada
Image: Asl alphabet gallaudet.svg

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Commons category: American Sign Language
linguistic typology: subject–verb–object
topic's main category: Category:American Sign Language
inception: 1817-00-00
influenced by: home sign
Wikimedia language code: ase
number of speakers, writers, or signers: 250000
category for films in this language: Category:American Sign Language films
short name: ASL
social media followers: 50189
native label: 𝣷𝪜 𝤃𝪜 𝣜𝪜
P10369: Banijay Entertainment
exact match: data.linguistik.de/bll/bll-ontology#bll-133077063

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Encyclopedic overview

American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology. ASL is not based on English. ASL is not a universal language; there are between 200-300 officially recognized signed languages around the world, and ASL is one of those languages.

Basic history

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “American Sign Language” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.