Hands That Speak

Helen Marsh has taught British Sign Language, or BSL, in the north of England for more than twenty years. The daughter of two Deaf parents, she grew up signing before she could speak. We met in a cafe near the community center where she runs evening classes, and talked about accents, misunderstandings and why sign languages are not what most people imagine.

"Let's start with the most common misconception. Is there one sign language that everybody uses?"

"No, and that surprises almost everyone. There are well over a hundred sign languages in the world, and they are not versions of the spoken languages around them. BSL is not English on the hands. It has its own vocabulary and its own grammar. The order of ideas, for example, is often quite different from English word order."

"So could a Deaf person from London easily understand one from New York?"

"Not easily, no. People find this strange, because the two countries share a spoken language. But American Sign Language has a completely different history. It developed largely from French Sign Language in the early nineteenth century, when a Deaf French teacher helped to found a school in Connecticut. So in a sense, ASL is closer to French Sign Language than to BSL. Even the fingerspelling is different: we spell with two hands, while Americans use one."

"What about Australia? Do Australians sign like Americans or like the British?"

"Much more like us. Auslan, the Australian sign language, and the sign language of New Zealand both descend from BSL, which was taken there in the nineteenth century. Some linguists treat the three as members of one family. When I met Deaf people in Sydney, I could follow most of what they were saying, although they had signs I had never seen, particularly for local things."

"Does BSL have regional accents, the way spoken English does?"

"Absolutely. Numbers and colors, for instance, can vary quite a lot from one region to another, partly because many Deaf children used to learn signing at residential schools, each of which had its own habits. If you watch someone sign for a few minutes, you can sometimes guess roughly where they went to school."

"How do you ask a question in BSL? You can't raise your voice at the end of a sentence."

"That's one of my favorite things to teach. Much of the grammar is on the face. For a yes-or-no question, you would normally raise your eyebrows. For a question like where or why, you usually bring them down. Hearing students often think they're just being expressive, but if you get the eyebrows wrong, you can turn a question into a statement."

"What would you like readers to take away from this?"

"That sign languages are real languages, with history, humor and poetry. BSL was only officially recognized by the UK government in 2003, and given legal status as a language of Great Britain much more recently. Things are changing, but slowly. If you're curious, find a class. Just be prepared to use your face a lot more than you're used to."