The main part of this book concerns the structure of BSL. We will be describing the way that the language works and how it can express different types of linguistic information. However, it is important to remember that all languages are used within a social context. To understand how a language is used, it is important to understand the interaction between the language and the communities that use it.
By now it should be clear that British Sign Language is the language of the British Deaf community. Its lexicon is different from other sign languages. Sign languages are not universal, and most sign languages are mutually unintelligible. The sign languages of all Deaf communities are independent of (even if they are influenced by) the spoken language of the surrounding hearing communities. For this reason there is very little similarity between American Sign Language, Irish Sign Language, and British Sign Language. The three Deaf communities are independent of each other, and so are the three sign languages.
However, some sign languages are historically related to each other. They are more similar to each other than to languages that are not related. In a similar way, some spoken languages are related. If we know German, we can read some Dutch, to which German is closely related. If we know Spanish, we can read Portuguese fairly easily, again, because the two languages are related. However, knowing Dutch and German will do us little good if we try to read Finnish, to which neither is related.
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