How do sign languages work without sound?
You know how some people talk with their hands when they're excited? Sign languages take that to a whole new level — they ARE the conversation, no voice required. Instead of sound waves traveling through air to your ears, the entire message travels through space to your eyes. It's a completely different channel, like switching from radio to television.
Here's the wild part: sign languages aren't just English (or Spanish or Korean) with your hands. American Sign Language is as different from British Sign Language as spoken French is from spoken Japanese. They grew up in different communities, so they invented different signs, different grammar, different ways of putting ideas together. A person who signs in ASL and a person who signs in BSL can't understand each other without learning the other's language.
