French is a particularly poor example to choose. ASL has been continuously delegitimized as a language. Up until the 60s no one thought ASL was a "real" languag

French is a particularly poor example to choose. ASL has been continuously delegitimized as a language. Up until the 60s no one thought ASL was a "real" language, or a language as rich as English, because no one was studying the grammar of ASL. And because ASL was seen as broken English, pantomime, or otherwise deficient, ASL was actively out of the reach of deaf people. Throughout history, deaf kids were punished for using sign language, and their hands were cuffed so they could not sign. French, on the other hand, has experience elevated status (perhaps not so much now that English is most often the lingua Franca, but even the term...). If someone comes out and suggests that French is simple, or basically a re-encoding of English, that will sound absurd but more importantly it will not be associated with a history of language oppression behind it.