American Sign Language (ASL)
Facts
- Spoken by: 500,000 to 1 million
- Geographic center:
- Subdivision: None
- Online resource:
Introduction
American Sign Language (or ASL, Ameslan) is the dominant sign language of deaf Americans (which include the deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico[citation needed]). Although the United Kingdom and the United States share English as a spoken and written language, British Sign Language (BSL) is quite different from ASL, and the two sign languages are not mutually intelligible.
ASL is also used (sometimes alongside indigenous sign languages) in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Côte d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Chad, Gabon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Mauritania, Kenya, Madagascar, and Zimbabwe. Like other sign languages, its grammar and syntax are distinct from any spoken language in its area of influence. While there has been no reliable survey of the number of people who use ASL as their primary language, estimates range from 500,000 to 2 million in the United States alone.
Language sample
Click play below to see a greeting in American Sign Language
Korean
Facts
- Spoken by: 72 million people
- Geographic center: Korean peninsula
- Subdivision: None
- Online resource: UCLA Language Material Project
Introduction
Korean, known in the language itself as Kugo, is the language of the Korean Peninsula in northeast Asia. In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) there are 20 million speakers and in the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) there are 42 million speakers. Korean is also spoken by almost 2 million people in China, mainly in provinces bordering North Korea. There are approximately half a million speakers in Japan and Russia, as well as significant numbers in the United States (over 600,000) with large communities on the west coast and in New York. Other communities are found in Singapore, Thailand, Guam, and Paraguay. The total number of speakers is 72 million (Grimes 1992).
There are no sizable language minorities in either North or South Korea. The Korean Peninsula is, and traditionally has been, an essentially monolingual region, although there is a history of Japanese domination and linguistic imposition.
Language sample
Click play below to hear a greeting in Korean