British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language (BANZSL), is the language of which
British Sign Language (BSL),
Auslan and
New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) may be considered dialects. These three languages may be considered dialects of a single language (BANZSL) due to their use of the same grammar,
manual alphabet, and the high degree of lexical overlap. The term BANZSL was coined by
Trevor Johnston and
Adam Schembri
Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...
.
BSL, Auslan and NZSL all have their roots in a deaf sign language used in Britain during the 19th century.
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
and BANZSL are unrelated sign languages. However, there is still significant overlap in vocabulary, probably due largely to relatively recent borrowing of lexicon by signers of all three dialects of BANZSL, with many younger signers unaware which signs are recent imports.
Between Auslan, BSL and NZSL, 82% of signs are identical (per
Swadesh lists). When considering identical as well as similar or related signs there are 98%
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
signs between the languages. By comparison, ASL and BANZSL have only 31% signs identical, or 44% cognate.
According to
Henri Wittmann
Henri Wittmann (born 1937) is a Canadian linguist from Quebec. He is best known for his work on Quebec French.
Biography
Henri (Hirsch) Wittmann was born in Alsace in 1937. After studying with André Martinet at the Sorbonne, he moved to North Am ...
(1991),
Swedish Sign Language also descends from BSL. From Swedish SL arose
Portuguese Sign Language and
Finnish Sign Language, the latter with local admixture;
Danish Sign Language is largely mutually intelligible with Swedish SL, though Wittmann places it in the
French Sign Language family.
Languages
*BSL (sign attested from 1644 may not be BSL), with approximately 151,000 users
**Australian SL (1860. ASL and
ISL influences), with approximately 10 000 speakers
*** Papua New Guinea Sign Language (), which is a creole formed with Auslan, used by 30,000 people
**New Zealand SL (1800s), used by approximately 20,000 people
**Northern Ireland SL (19th century - with
American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
and
Irish Sign Language influences)
**South African SL (somewhere between 1846 & 1881), used by perhaps 235,000 people
**Maritime SL (), with perhaps 100 extant users
**?
Swedish Sign Language family (1800)
*** Portuguese SL (1823)
*** Finnish SL (1850s, with local admixture)
See also
*
Old French Sign Language – a contemporary of BANZSL
*
French Sign Language family
Notes
References
* Johnston, T. (2002). ''BSL, Auslan and NZSL: Three signed languages or one?'' In A. Baker, B. van den Bogaerde & O. Crasborn (Eds.), "Cross-linguistic perspectives in sign language research: Selected papers from TISLR 2000" (pp. 47–69). Hamburg: Signum Verlag.
* McKee, D. & G. Kennedy (2000). Lexical Comparison of Signs from American, Australian, British, and New Zealand Sign Languages. In K. Emmorey and H. Lane (Eds), "The signs of language revisited: an anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima". Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
{{sign language navigation
BANZSL Sign Language family
Deaf culture