--- title: Sign language — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Sign language», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Sign languages are full, real languages made with the hands, face and body, with their own words and their own grammar, as rich as any spoken language. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Sign language # Sign language Lesson 32 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/32-sign-language/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/0/) — Sign languages are full, real languages made with the hands, face and body, with their own words and their own grammar, as rich as any spoken language. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/1/) — At a club Lily watches Sam, a Deaf boy, sign to his mum so fast her eyes can't keep up; it isn't English spelled on the hands, it's British Sign Language, a different language altogether. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/2/) — There is not one sign language for the whole world: Britain has BSL, America has ASL, Ukraine has Ukrainian Sign Language, and even countries that share English have very different sign languages. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/3/) — Faces matter as much as hands: raised eyebrows can turn a sentence into a question, so a signer's expressions are grammar, not rudeness. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/4/) — Babies who see signing even "babble" with their hands, which shows that language lives in the brain, not just in the mouth. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/5/) — British Sign Language (BSL) is a full language with its own grammar, different from English; it uses hand shapes, movements, the face and the body. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/6/) — People who are part of Deaf culture and use sign language often write Deaf with a capital D. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/7/) — American Sign Language (ASL) and BSL are different languages; ASL is related to French Sign Language. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/8/) — BSL fingerspelling uses two hands, ASL fingerspelling uses one; fingerspelling is for names and words without a sign. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/9/) — In sign languages, facial expressions are part of the grammar: raised eyebrows can turn a sentence into a yes/no question. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/10/) — In 2022 a new British law said that BSL is a real language of England, Scotland and Wales. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/11/) — BSL, Auslan (Australian Sign Language) and New Zealand Sign Language belong to one family, so their signers understand each other quite well. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/13/) — In BSL a simple "hello" is a wave; when talking to a Deaf person, face them, speak clearly if they lip-read, and don't shout. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/14/) — Sign language interpreters translate live between spoken language and sign language, so Deaf people can follow things like the news. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/32-sign-language/15/) — Ukrainian Sign Language is a separate language, so a Deaf boy from Ukraine moving to London needs to learn BSL, just as hearing children learn English. - ← previous: [How babies learn to talk](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/31-how-babies-learn-to-talk/) - next →: [Ukrainian compared with English](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/33-ukrainian-compared-with-english/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)