I should note that Shannon at one point says there are "14,000" languages in the world, because people when saying there are "7,000" languages in the world are forgetting that sign languages exist — however it is a bit presumptive to assume that there is a roughly equal number of signed languages as spoken languages.

Still, I think this is an intriguing perspective that makes me want to know more about the language dynamics and language politics of Deaf people around the world.

  • bufalo1973@lemmy.ml
    ·
    15 hours ago

    The worst part is that there is no standard between languages. After all, you can call an apple "apple", " manzana", "pome", " poma", ... and it's always the same thing. So the sign should be the same, right?

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
      hexagon
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Sorry, are you implying that sign languages are just engineered representations of spoken languages? Because if you are, those are called MCLs (manually coded languages), and are completely different from sign languages.

      • bufalo1973@lemmy.ml
        ·
        5 hours ago

        I've always heard that different sign language have different signs for the same significant.

        • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
          hexagon
          ·
          4 hours ago

          Yes, they do, but I'm just confused about why you think different sign languages should have the same sign.

            • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]
              hexagon
              ·
              3 minutes ago

              If you were to force all the Deaf people of the world to use the same language, Deaf people would still communicate with their local communities far more often than communities in other countries, which means that neologisms and accents and so forth would gradually develop and accumulate, until there would eventually once again be hundreds of different regional sign languages — unless you were also continually suppressing Deaf people's attempts to control their own languages, which is both a terrible thing to do and also not particularly sustainable in the long run.

              ...So by imposing a "Universal Sign Language", you would've really just eradicated an enormous source of understudied language diversity and global cultural heritage, in order to not-solve a non-issue. Deaf people already have ways to communicate across language boundaries that they're perfectly satisfied with, including, among others, the international auxiliary pidgin language used in the above video.

      • bufalo1973@lemmy.ml
        ·
        5 hours ago

        I mean that the significant is the same. A flower is a flower, regardless of the name you give it.