Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why you should learn sign language, published by Noah Topper on January 18, 2023 on LessWrong.

Sorry if this is somewhat off topic, but I have a small dream of sign language becoming a rationalist shibboleth and serving as a jumping off point for sign to spread more in society at large. I know this is pretty unlikely, but it seems worth a shot. I gave a presentation on it at a LessWrong Community Weekend, and people seemed interested. Sign language is also super intellectually interesting in its own right and is a very fun learning experience! Anyway, on with the show.

(EDIT: A few extra notes based on comments. First, I actually think ASL is pretty easy to learn from the video lectures I link below. I did okay in a one-on-one conversation with a deaf person after that. Second, you'll obviously have to weigh up if learning to sign is worth it for you. I have just tried to argue that it's more useful and enriching than you might otherwise have thought. Finally, this mostly is just a Neat Thing. The only "rationalist" aspects would come from an interest in learning neat things, and my argument that society would be better optimized if everyone knew how to sign. Sorry again for being off topic.)

Introduction

I’ve been learning sign language for four years now, and I swear it’s fun like nothing else in the world. At the risk of projecting my interests onto others, I’d like to make the case for learning to sign. I’ll focus primarily on American Sign Language (ASL) since it’s what I know, but most of what I say should generalize to other sign languages too.

If you want to learn ASL, I highly recommend Dr. Bill Vicars’ materials here. Vicars has a PhD in deaf education, is deaf himself, and has published his core ASL 1 - 4 lectures online, plus much more, free of charge. He is seriously excellent.

What is sign language anyway?

First, I should explain what sign language is. The basics are probably pretty clear: it’s a language where you communicate using the shape and movement of your hands, rather than spoken or written words (although really other body parts are involved too, like facial expressions). So that’s what sign language is. But more importantly, what is it not?

ASL is not a conlang. Conlangs (or constructed languages) are purposefully invented and planned for some purpose, such as Esperanto for international communication, or Lojban for unambiguous communication.

While we’re at it, ASL is not a code for English. For example, Braille is a writing system in which an existing language is encoded into tactile form. There is even such a thing as Signed Exact English, which directly encodes each English word into a sign and maintains all the same grammatical structure. But ASL is not like these.

Furthermore, ASL is not universal. When people first learn a bit more about sign, they are very commonly surprised that, for example, Britain and America have totally different sign languages. And there’s a certain feel-good, hippy-dippy meme that, like, there can only be one sign language, man. Cuz it’s just pictures, man. I mean it’s just the symbols for the thing. It transcends language. How could there be more than one? (Someone has said this to my face.) The only problem is that it’s not true.

Instead, ASL is a natural language. It developed organically among deaf people attempting to communicate with eachother. Historically, Britain’s first school for the deaf was founded in 1760, and America’s in 1817. Before such schools, deaf people were largely isolated from any sort of deaf community, leaving little opportunity for language to develop, beyond some home sign and occasional village sign.

With the American revolution taking place in 1776, we can see these two sign languages must have developed independently. On reflection, then, there’s no good reason to expect them to ...