Editing Sign language (section)

=== Relationships with spoken languages ===
[[Image:Holečkova, nápis ve znakové řeči.jpg|thumb| Sign language relief sculpture on a stone wall: "Life is beautiful, be happy and love each other", by Czech sculptor [[Zuzana Čížková]] on Holečkova Street in [[Prague]]-[[Smíchov]], by a school for the deaf]]

There is a common misconception<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Pirot |first1=Khunaw Sulaiman |last2=Ali |first2=Wrya Izaddin |date=2021-09-29 |title=The Common Misconceptions about Sign Language |url=http://journal.uor.edu.krd/index.php/JUR/article/view/629 |journal=Journal of University of Raparin |volume=8 |issue=3 |pages=110–132 |doi=10.26750/Vol(8).No(3).Paper6 |s2cid=244246983 |issn=2522-7130 |doi-access=free |access-date=2022-09-26 |archive-date=2022-12-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221204075309/http://journal.uor.edu.krd/index.php/JUR/article/view/629 |url-status=live }}</ref> that sign languages are [[manually coded language|spoken language expressed in signs]], or that they were invented by hearing people.<ref>{{cite web|last=Perlmutter|first=David M.|title=What is Sign Language?|url=http://www.linguisticsociety.org/files/Sign_Language.pdf|work=LSA|access-date=4 November 2013|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140412004710/http://www.linguisticsociety.org/files/Sign_Language.pdf|archive-date=12 April 2014}}</ref> Similarities in [[Sign language in the brain|language processing in the brain]] between signed and spoken languages further perpetuated this misconception. Hearing teachers in deaf schools, such as Charles-Michel de l'Épée or Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, are often incorrectly referred to as "inventors" of sign language. Instead, sign languages, like all natural languages, are developed by the people who use them, in this case, deaf people, who may have little or no knowledge of any spoken language.

As a sign language develops, it sometimes borrows elements from spoken languages, just as all languages borrow from other languages that they are in contact with. Sign languages vary in how much they borrow from spoken languages. In many sign languages, a manual alphabet ("fingerspelling") may be used in signed communication to borrow a word from a spoken language. This is most commonly used for proper names of people and places; it is also used in some languages for concepts for which no sign is available at that moment, particularly if the people involved are to some extent bilingual in the spoken language. Fingerspelling can sometimes be a source of new signs, such as initialized signs, in which the handshape represents the first letter of a spoken word with the same meaning.
[[File:Keep Wales Safe This Winter- British Sign Language (BSL).webm|thumb|A January 2021 [[Welsh Government]] video informing viewers of their new [[COVID-19 pandemic in Wales|COVID-19]] regulations]]

On the whole, though, sign languages are independent of spoken languages and follow their own paths of development. For example, [[British Sign Language]] (BSL) and [[American Sign Language]] (ASL) are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of the United Kingdom and the United States share the same spoken language. The grammars of sign languages do not usually resemble those of spoken languages used in the same geographical area; in fact, in terms of syntax, ASL shares more with spoken [[Japanese grammar|Japanese]] than it does with English.<ref>[[Karen Nakamura|Nakamura, Karen]]. (1995). "About American Sign Language." Deaf Resource Library, Yale University. [http://www.deaflibrary.org/asl.html] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130519230633/http://www.deaflibrary.org/asl.html|date=2013-05-19}}</ref>

Similarly, countries which use a single spoken language throughout may have two or more sign languages, or an area that contains more than one spoken language might use only one sign language. [[South Africa]], which has 11 official spoken languages and a similar number of other widely used spoken languages, is a good example of this. It has only one sign language with two variants due to its history of having two major educational institutions for the deaf which have served different geographic areas of the country.