> It’s absolutely bonkers that two fairly different sign languages exist for the same base spoken language. Sign languages are not based off of spoken language

> It’s absolutely bonkers that two fairly different sign languages exist for the same base spoken language. Sign languages are not based off of spoken languages. Sign languages are languages with their own grammar and vocabulary. They are not a method of encoding spoken language like writing is. The history of Nicaraguan Sign Language is a great example of this. In the 70s the government of Nicaragua set up a school for the deaf focused on teaching its students to fingerspell Spanish. Instead, the students spontaneously created their own sign language.