ASL is Not Manual Code for English
from Bilingual in America Hosted by Suzanne Lasser, Yarina Sencion
Many questions come to mind when the topic of ASL (American Sign Language) as a foreign language is brought up. People often ask if it is appropriate to call ASL a foreign language. Is it really a language? Others may note that foreign language courses teach students about the culture of the group of people who use the language. The answers to all of these questions support the recognition of ASL as a foreign language. Because of its unique modality -- visual/gestural rather than oral --, many people wrongly assume that ASL is fundamentally different than spoken languages. ASL is a fully developed human language, one of the hundreds of naturally occurring signed languages of the world. It is not a "simplified" language -- it contains structures and processes which English lacks. There is abundant linguistic research on ASL demonstrating that the grammar of ASL is radically different from English -- surely as different as any of the more traditional foreign languages taught in school.
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