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British sign language (BSL) is the sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK). BSL is the first or preferred language of nearly 70,000 deaf or hearing-impaired people in the UK. It is a language of space and movement using the hands, body, face and head. Many thousands of hearing people also use BSL.
Although Great Britain and the United States share English as a spoken language, British Sign Language is distinct from American Sign Language (ASL). BSL fingerspelling is also different from ASL as it uses two hands instead of one. The Makaton system was developed by borrowing signs from British Sign Language. BSL is also distinct from Irish Sign Language (ISL) which is more closely related to French Sign Language and ASL. Both BSL and ISL are used in Northern Ireland.
BSL has what could loosely be termed 'accents' or dialects. Signs that are used in Scotland for example, may not always be understood in the South of England, and vice versa. Some signs are even more local, occurring only in certain towns or cities. Likewise, some may go in or out of fashion, or evolve over time, just as terms in spoken languages do.
The systems for sign language used in Australia and New Zealand, AuslanAuslan is the sign language used by the Australian Deaf community. The word 'Auslan' comes from "australian sign language". It is not called ASL as that refers to American Sign Language. It is related to British Sign Language (BSL) and New Zealand Sign La and New Zealand Sign LanguageNew Zealand Sign Language or NZSL is the main language of the Deaf Community in New Zealand. New Zealand Sign Language has its roots in British Sign Language (BSL), and may be technically considered a dialect of BANZSL. It uses the same the two-handed man, were based largely on 19th Century BSL, and all retain the same manual alphabet, grammar and similar lexicon. BSL, Auslan and NZSL together may be called BANZSLBANZSL or British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language is the name given to the parent language which British Sign Language (BSL), Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) may be considered dialects of. These languages may technically be considere.
There have been campaigns to have BSL recognised on a similar level to Welsh and the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland. The BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation BBC is primarily a national publicly-funded broadcaster based in the United Kingdom, which also has some international services. Some of the international services (such as BBC cable TV in America, Canada and elsewhere broadcasts many programmes with in-vision signing, using BSL. Also it makes the programme See HearSee Hear is a weekly BBC programme for deaf people in the UK. The programme features interviews with people involved with the deaf in areas such as education, deaf rights, technology, and language. There are often interesting topics covering many issues,, which is aimed mainly at Deaf people.