Joe Jacobs: The joys of learning a second sign language

I was prompted to translate my books into more sign languages when I gave the ASL edition of my children’s book, How to Sign Animals with Terry the Monkey, to a profoundly deaf six-year-old girl who was travelling to America; a third generation BSL signer, she had never learned ASL before. She couldn’t wait to teach her family and friends the American signs for ‘unicorn’ and ‘lion’. 

People are often surprised that I write books in both British and American Sign Language editions. A common assumption is that there is one sign language that is understood the world over. In fact, ethnologue.com lists 144 sign languages, from the Adamorobe Sign Language of Ghana to Zimbabwe Sign Language.

Even within a single sign language there are regional differences, dialects, slang. Colours vary the most; UCL’s signbank lists 17 different BSL signs for ‘purple’. 

This Tower of Babel, or Confusion of Hands, seems illogical to non-signers – why doesn’t everyone use the same sign language? (“And the whole world was of one language, and of one speech…”). 

I have begun translating my first book, How to Sign Animals with Terry the Monkey, into Australian, French, Japanese and Chinese sign languages. This is less ambitious than it sounds; the signs for animals are usually iconic (meaning that the signs look like the animal they are trying to convey) and so are similar around the world.

The sign for ‘elephant’, indicating some form of trunk, is recognisable everywhere. The signs that diverge the most are the commonest words: signs for pets like ‘cat’ or ‘dog’. It is fascinating to see the different ways that people sign the animals that they live and work with most closely. (See the covers for the ASL, LSF and JSL editions below, which all feature signs for ‘cat’). 

As with foreign travel, the pleasure of studying a foreign language is noticing cultural differences. In Chinese Sign Language, the sign for ‘eat’ mimics the use of chopsticks, and there are separate signs for ‘little brother’ and ‘big brother’, just as the concepts have separate words in Mandarin.

In Japanese Sign Language, the sign for ‘hello’ is made by holding the index fingers a few inches apart and bending them towards one another, like two people bowing. In French Sign Language, the sign for spider involves the right hand descending on a thread of silk – iconic signs in French have a finesse that recalls the mime of Marcel Marceau.    

Studying new sign languages has helped me to appreciate the history of signing in countries around the world, and to understand how closely the changing status of sign language is linked to the quality of life of deaf people in these countries.

In every country, the founding of deaf schools has led to a flourishing of sign language and Deaf culture, and in nearly every country there has been a period in which sign language has been suppressed in favour of lip reading and oralism (during the Taisho period in Japan (1912-26), or following the Milan conference of 1880 across America and Europe).

And in nearly every country there has been a renaissance of sign language. There is still much to be done, especially in improving children’s access to sign language, but the news from most countries is that sign language is gaining recognition, as both a vital life skill and as a complex form of language.  

In Japan, the profile of sign language has been raised by the Imperial family, in particular Princess Akishino and her daughter Kako, and by the popular Manga series A Silent Voice. Young signers in Japan now fingerspell interjections and drag them across their bodies so that they look like the frames in Manga comics. 

Seeing this diversity of sign has strengthened my view that having a universal, homogenous sign language is not desirable.

Sign language does have an equivalent of Esperanto, or a global language – it used to be known as Gestuno, but is now more commonly referred to as International Sign, a simplified form of sign language used at global conferences and events like the Olympics. International Sign lacks the vitality of a language which arises spontaneously and the capacity to reflect the culture of its users. 

Whether a fingerspelling alphabet uses one hand or two, whether the sign for ‘spider’ is made with an invisible thread, interlocked thumbs or a crawling hand, like Thing from the Addams Family, the similarities between sign languages are more profound than the differences. 

In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sachs wrote that sign languages:

‘All have, beneath their specific differences, some generic resemblance to ASL. There is no universal sign language, but there are, it seems, universals in all sign languages, universals not of meaning, but of grammatical form.’ 

Sign languages are not simply collections of signs, just as a spoken language is not merely a collection of words. Languages require grammatical rules. Spoken English is linear, whereas sign language is spatial and temporal. The meaning of a sign is modified grammatically by how the hands and face move in space and time, in four dimensions, often allowing several ideas to be expressed simultaneously. Sachs described this effect as ‘cinematic.’ 

Translating my books into new sign languages has given me a greater appreciation of human ingenuity and variety –  but also of the deep connections that exist between those who sign around the world.

How to Sign Animals with Terry the Monkey by Joe Jacobs , who is hearing, is currently available in paperback and ebook from Amazon in both BSL and ASL editions. The full range of Terry the Monkey books can be found at terrythemonkey.com. Joe is currently compiling a sign language dictionary for children which is due to be published this summer.