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A unique sign language, possibly dating back to the 1800s or before, is being used in Hawaii, marking the first time in 80 years a previously unknown language -- spoken or signed -- has been documented in the U.S. The language is not a dialect of American Sign Language, as previously believed, but an unrelated language with unique vocabulary and grammar. It also is on the verge of extinction, with an estimated 40 users of the language.

Deaf people from Philadelphia have a noteworthy, distinctive regional accent in their signg language. When most people talk about a dialect in spoken languages, and in sign languages too, a lot of what they center on are lexical differences: differences in words. In ASL, there are many, many signs that have lexical differences. For example, the (Philadelphia) sign for hospital is exceptionally different from what standard ASL would be, and among other things. To the point where the signs are not able to be deciphered based on what they look like. The historical reason for the differences between Philadelphian sign language and standard ASL: the first school for the deaf was founded by a French teacher, and therefore Philadelphia sign is more akin to French signing than American signing.

People in Philadelphia speak with a distinctive Philly accent, and those who converse in sign language are no different. The area is known for having one of the most distinctive regional sign language accents, and two researchers based at the University of Pennsylvania are trying to figure out why. In sign language, an accent is apparent in how words are signed differently-it's a lexical difference, similar to how some Americans say "pop" while others say "soda," explains Meredith Tamminga, one of the professors conducting the research. Some possible reasons: the first sign language teacher in the United States and the person who founded the first Philadelphia school for the deaf, Laurent Clerc, was a Frenchman. Many Philadelphia deaf signers were educated at the school, and moreover, remained geographically stable, limiting their exposure to signers who used conventional ASL. While ASL has evolved to a distinctive American sign language over time, the Philadelphia version maintains more of its French roots.

This article talks about the ASL-LEX database that four scientists created. The map of signs is meant to represent a mental lexicon and is allowing them to examine how signs are organized in the human mind. The article explains that signs may rhyme in a visual way even though the words do not, which causes the brain to relate groups of signs together. One pattern that was noticed is that the more commonly used signs tend to be simpler and shorter than the rare ones, which is comparable to spoken language. They also found that common signs are more likely to be in clusters of visually similar words, while rare signs are more isolated.

Ubiquitous video technology and social media have given deaf people a new way to communicate. They're using it to transform American Sign Language. For more than a century, the telephone has helped shape how people communicate. But it had a less profound impact on American Sign Language, which relies on both hand movements and facial expressions to convey meaning. Until, that is, phones started to come with video screens. Over the past decade or so, smartphones and social media have allowed ASL users to connect with one another as never before. Face-to-face interaction, once a prerequisite for most sign language conversations, is no longer required. Video has also given users the opportunity to teach more people the language - there are thriving ASL communities on YouTube and TikTok - and the ability to quickly invent and spread new signs, to reflect either the demands of the technology or new ways of thinking.

A spoken language is more than just words and sounds. Speakers use changes in pitch and rhythm, known as prosody, to provide emphasis, show emotion, and otherwise add meaning to what they say. But a language does not need to be spoken to have prosody: sign languages, such as American Sign Language (ASL), use movements, pauses and facial expressions to achieve the same goals. In a study appearing in the September 2015 issue of Language, three linguists look at intonation (a key part of prosody) in ASL and find that native ASL signers learn intonation in much the same way that users of spoken languages do. Children learning ASL acquired prosodic features in three stages of "appearance, reorganization, and mastery": accurately replicating their use in simpler contexts, attempting unsuccessfully at first to use them in more challenging contexts, then using them accurately in all contexts as they fully learn the rules of prosody. Previous research has shown that native learners of spoken languages acquire intonation following a similar pattern.

Hawaii Sign Language (HSL) was once believed to be similar to American Sign Language (ASL), used in the majority of deaf communities in the U.S. However, the work of Woodward and his team revealed they're not similar at all. In 2013, the language was recognized as its own distinct language. "Everything is different," Woodward says. "The vocabulary has less than 10% correlation to ASL, which is typical of languages that don't have a relationship to each other and were developed independently." HSL also uses much more body movement and facial expression than ASL.

Beginning with Gangnam Style, followed by the success of K-pop groups such as BTS, interest in Korean popular culture has skyrocketed in the past decade. One way this has manifested is through a steep rise in individuals learning the Korean language. According to a study conducted by the Modern Language Association, U.S. college student enrollment in Korean language classes has risen 78% from 2009 to 2016, reaching 15,000, while total enrollment in language classes has plateaued in recent years. The only other widely learned language with significant growth in the span was American Sign Language, which increased enrollments by 37%. Despite this trend, East Asian Studies departments have struggled to accommodate the increasing demand for Korean classes. This is because Korean language classes have been historically limited and under-resourced due to the fact that language programs in East Asian Studies have traditionally focused on Mandarin and Japanese. Experts say that K-pop is the main reason for this trend, coupled with the success of several Korean TV shows and films such as Parasite and Squid Game. The current growing trend of interest in the Korean language and culture has also been an opportunity for South Korea to engage Americans in a variety of other sectors relating to the country including business, politics, economics, and history.

There's evidence deaf Hawaiians had been communicating with a homegrown sign language for generations, predating the arrival of missionaries, sugar plantations and the Americans who would overthrow the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. But linguists didn't officially document the language until 2013, when research by the University of Hawaii found HSL to be a language isolate: born and bred on the Hawaiian Islands with no outside influence. More than 80 percent of its vocabulary bears no similarity to ASL. The findings launched a three-year project to document what remained of HSL, led by Lambrecht and linguistics professor James "Woody" Woodward, who has spent the last 30 years studying and documenting sign languages throughout Asia. By 2016, the team had built a video archive and developed a manuscript for an introductory HSL handbook and dictionary, featuring illustrations of Lambrecht demonstrating signs.

The University of Hawaii plays a lead role in a major statewide initiative called the Hawaii Language Roadmap, which aims to create a robust, multilingual workforce in Hawaii. This video gives an overview of the project. On June 16, 2015, thanks to the efforts of several stakeholders, including the Hawaii Language Roadmap, Hawaii's Board of Education unanimously voted to approve a Seal of Biliteracy for Hawaii's public school students. The policy adopted by the BOE reads as follows: The Board of Education hereby establishes a Seal of Biliteracy to be awarded upon graduation to students who demonstrate high proficiency in either of the State's two official languages and at least one additional language, including American Sign Language; provided that a student who demonstrates a high proficiency in both of the State's two official languages shall be awarded a Seal of Biliteracy. The purposes of the Seal of Biliteracy are to recognize the importance of: (1) enabling students to be college, career, and community ready in today's global society; (2) establishing an educational culture that recognizes and values the wealth of linguistic and cultural diversity students bring to the classroom; (3) supporting opportunities for study of and increasing proficiency in 'Ōlelo Hawai'i, an official language of the State of Hawai'i; and (4) encouraging partnerships with institutions of higher education and community organizations to increase access to language instruction in a variety of languages. The Department of Education shall implement the Seal of Biliteracy, including developments of criteria that students must satisfy to receive the Seal. Rationale: The Board of Education recognizes that there is personal, cultural, social, academic, and vocational/occupational value in encouraging students to maintain, or develop, proficiency in more than one language.

Code-switching involves moving freely between two different languages or dialects of a single language. Many people of color, especially mixed-race and multi-cultural people naturally code-switch. This article shows us Sheena Cobb as an example because she uses both the American Sign Language (ASL) and Black ASL depending on who she is with. Elements of black culture appear in Black ASL such as religious practice, cooking, humor, music, hairstyles, words and phrases typically used in the black communities. People who use Black ASL tend to sign with two hands, in different positions, in a larger signing space and with more repetition than with regular ASL signs.

Douglas Quenqua reports on crowdsourcing projects in both American Sign Language and British Sign Language are under way at several universities, and how those projects standardize signs for commonly used science terms.

Imagine traveling to the next state, or even the next town, and not being able to converse with others. This is how it was for the deaf until ASL (American Sign Language) was formed in 1841. This tells of the history of ASL.

the part of this text that I was able to read, talked about the basics of sign language and how it is characterized as a language in the field of linguistics. This text explains how there are different meanings for similar signs based on hand shape, movement, location, orientation, and non-manual signs.

"Psychologists had already suspected that language was important for understanding numbers. Earlier studies of two tribes in the Amazon - one that had no words for numbers greater than five and another whose counting system seemed to go "one, two, many" - showed that people in those tribes had trouble reporting exactly how many objects were placed in front of them. But in those cultures, which don't have monetary systems, there might be no need to represent large numbers exactly. The question posed was whether language kept those Amazonian people from counting, or a lack of cultural pressure. To address that question, Spaepen and colleagues turned to Nicaraguan homesigners, deaf people who communicate with their hearing friends and relatives entirely through made-up hand gestures."

Researchers are using computer-animation techniques, such as motion-capture, to make life-like computer avatars that can reliably and naturally translate written and spoken words into sign language, whether it's American Sign Language or that of another country. The signing avatars can also be used in apps and games to help deaf children get early exposure to language, which is critical for their cognitive development.

This article by Candice Jalili on Time discusses the body language people tend to have when lying. Everyone can lie, in fact, the average American tells one to two lies each day. It explains how to detect honesty in a conversation, including where their eyes go and how their voice sounds. When someone is lying, they are likely uncomfortable, so they may fidget or have frequent voice cracks. Doctors from the healthcare community provide input on signs people display when lying. The main sections of this article are body cues, facial cues, tone of voice, and content of speech. Body cues include hand movement and itching/fidgeting. Facial cues are eye movement, mouth position, change in complexion, and sweating. The section on tone of voice consists of a high pitched voice and changes in volume while speaking. Lastly, content of speech includes phrases people use, filler words, and slip-ups.

ASL dictionary Browse thousands of words in the ASL dictionary online. May 2012: There are linguistic and educational benefits of learning both American Sign Language and spoken/written English. Deaf children can acquire two languages ... An interview with Francois Grosjean by Nataly Kelly, Chief Research Offier, Common Sense Advisory. Not only does this site act as a dictionary for ASL, but it teachers baby signing and finger signing too! It also highlights benefits of knowing sign.

Two University of Washington undergraduates have won a $10,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for gloves that can translate sign language into text or speech. The Lemelson-MIT Student Prize is a nationwide search for the most inventive undergraduate and graduate students. This year, UW sophomores Navid Azodi and Thomas Pryor - who are studying business administration and aeronautics and astronautics engineering, respectively - won the "Use It" undergraduate category that recognizes technology-based inventions to improve consumer devices. Their invention, "SignAloud," is a pair of gloves that can recognize hand gestures that correspond to words and phrases in American Sign Language. Each glove contains sensors that record hand position and movement and send data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a central computer. The computer looks at the gesture data through various sequential statistical regressions, similar to a neural network. If the data match a gesture, then the associated word or phrase is spoken through a speaker.

In the last half century, much effort has been placed into teaching animals, primarily apes, a basic language. However, successes have been limited: animals using signs to obtain things in which they were interested, for instance. But no animal has yet acquired the linguistic capability that children have already in their third year of life. Here are some things that differentiate humans from animals: 1. The fact that animals don't ask "why?" shows they don't aspire to knowledge and are incapable of justification. 2. The inability of animals to use negation shows they lack basic logical abilities. 3. Another essential characteristic of human language is its normativity-namely, the fact that there are right and wrong uses of a word or phrase. Animals lack this capacity.