1. American Sign Language (or ASL, Ameslan) is the dominant sign language of deaf Americans (which include the deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico[citation needed]). Although the United Kingdom and the United States share English as a spoken and written language, British Sign Language (BSL) is quite different from ASL, and the two sign languages are not mutually intelligible. ASL is also used (sometimes alongside indigenous sign languages) in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Gabon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe. Like other sign languages, its grammar and syntax are distinct from any spoken language in its area of influence. While there has been no reliable survey of the number of people who use ASL as their primary language, estimates range from 500,000 to 2 million in the United States… American sign language

2. In the United States, as elsewhere in the world, hearing families with deaf children often employ ad-hoc home sign, an idiosyncratic set of hand gestures, for simple communications. Today though, ASL classes are offered in many secondary and postsecondary schools. ASL is a language distinct from spoken English; while it borrows many elements of English (e.g., spelled words, "initialized" signs (for example the signs for group and team are the same motion but the hand are held with the sign for the letters "G" and "T" respectively to denote meaning), and direct translations of English idioms, it nonetheless possesses its own syntax and grammar and supports its own culture. The origin of modern ASL is ultimately tied to the confluence of many events and circumstances. These include historical attempts at deaf education; the unique situation present on a small island in Massachusetts, Martha's Vineyard where a large percentage of the population was deaf; the attempts of a father named Dr. Mason Cogswell to enlist a local minister, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, to help educate his deaf daughter, Alice Cogswell; and the ingenuity and genius of people (in this case deaf people) for language itself. ASL has been historically discouraged in schools for the deaf in many parts of the country. During periods of repression in residential schools, deaf children of deaf adults were the primary agents of spreading the language to other deaf children. History of asl

3. In 1815, a Protestant minister, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, left his home in Hartford, Connecticut to visit Europe. Dr. Mason Cogswell had asked Gallaudet to investigate methods of teaching his deaf daughter, Alice Cogswell. While in England, Gallaudet hit a roadblock when directors of the Braidwood Schools, who taught the oral method, refused to share their methods of teaching. Nevertheless, while in London, Gallaudet met with AbbéSicard, director of the Royal Institution for the Deaf in Paris, and two of his students, one of whom was Laurent Clerc. Sicard invited Gallaudet to visit the school in Paris. He did not go immediately, but instead traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland where he again met the methods of Braidwood. They again refused to teach him their methods. Gallaudet then traveled to Paris and learned the educational methods of the Royal Institution for the Deaf with sign language, a combination of Old French Sign Language and the signs developed by Abbé de l’Épée. Gallaudet persuaded Clerc to return with him to Connecticut and become a teacher for the deaf. Gallaudet and Clerc opened the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons (now called American School for the Deaf) in April 1817. Deaf students were taught French signs and brought in signs of their own, such as those from Martha’s Vineyard. Thus, it was at this school that all these influences would intermingle and become what is now known as American Sign Language. BIETH OF AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE AND AMERICAN SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF

4. ASL is a natural language as proven to the satisfaction of the linguistic community by William Stokoe, and contains phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics just like spoken languages. It is a manual language or visual language, meaning that the information is expressed not with combinations of sounds but with combinations of handshapes, palm orientations, movements of the hands, arms and body, location in relation to the body, and facial expressions. While spoken languages are produced by the vocal cords only, and can thus be easily written in linear patterns, ASL uses the hands, head and body, with constantly changing movements and orientations. Like other natural sign languages, it is "three dimensional" in this sense. LINGUISTICS

5. In recent years, researchers have shown that exposure to sign language has a positive impact on the socialization of hearing children. When infants are taught to sign, parents are able to converse with them at a developmental stage when they are not yet capable of producing vocal speech, which requires fine control of both breathing and the vocal tract. The ability of a child to actively communicate earlier than would otherwise be possible appears to accelerate language development and to decrease the frustrations of communication. Many parents use a collection of simplified or ad hoc signs called "baby sign." However, parents can learn to recognize their baby's approximations of adult ASL signs, just as they will later learn to recognize their approximations of oral language, so teaching an infant ASL is also possible. Typically young children will make an ASL sign in the correct location and use the correct hand motion, but may be able only to approximate the hand shape, for example, using one finger instead of three in signing water. Deaf children from deaf families will often "babble" in sign, just as their hearing counterparts babble in speech. BABY SIGN