American Sign Language (ASL) is a sign language, a language which uses the hands, facial expression, and body language rather than the voice. Like other sign languages, its grammar and syntax are distinct from oral languages such as English. In the 1960s, ASL was sometimes referred to as "Ameslan" but this term is now considered obsolete.
ASL is the predominant sign language of deaf communities in the United States and English-speaking parts of Canada. Although the United Kingdom and the United States / Canada share English as a common oral and written language, British Sign Language (BSL) is a completely different language from ASL, and they are not mutually intelligible. ASL is instead related to French Sign Language.
Besides North America, dialects of ASL or ASL-based creoles are used, sometimes alongside indigenous sign languages, in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Gabon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Barbados, Bolivia, China, Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.
Read more about American Sign Language: Population, Variations in Signed English, History, Linguistics, Variation, Classifiers, Fingerspelling, Writing Systems, ASL and Baby Sign
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