Mexican Sign Language

¶ … American Sign Language (ASL) & Mexican Sign Language (LSM). The purpose of this review is to look at another language outside of ASL. Faurot, Dellinger, Eatough, & Parkhurst reported in this article that according to informal Deaf history, both languages came from Old French Sign Language and were brought over to the United States and Mexico within roughly 50 years of each other: to the U.S.A. In 1816 and to Mexico about 1869. However, as the sign systems were brought over from France, they were adapted to the situations that existed in each country. Both countries already had deaf people who used sign. These signs were incorporated into the new language and supplemented heavily by the French Sign system. It appears that the "founders" of the languages had different ideas as to how the new language should be structured. Mexican sign appears to be very strongly influenced by Spanish in its vocabulary.

Throughout the reading comparisons are made between ASL and LSM, it is actually concluded that the two a very dissimilar and this is believed to be due to the strong Spanish influences that exist in LSM. However, it is also discussed that though this strong influence exists there too are marked differences between Spanish and LSM. The first section of the writing discusses the comparisons that were done in order to access the similarities in the words of ASL & LSM. During this review the researchers looked at 100 words, 16 were identical while 13 were similar. It was determined that there was only a 23% lexical similarity. This data confirmed the idea that a sign in one language often means something else in another. There appear to be very different attitudes regarding initialization. ASL showed only 12% of the 100 signs to be initialized. LSM showed 37% initialization. In the U.S.A., initialized signs are often viewed as "hearing" signs. Initialized signs are commonly used in schools to help teach children to speak or spell English. The systems, which make the strongest use of initialization in the U.S.A., are the various versions of signing based on a strict adherence to English grammar, i.e., Signing Exact English, Seeing Essential English, and others. LSM vocabulary, however, seems to have been developed with a very strong Spanish influence and has kept the initialization to this day. Initialization is not seen as a negative strategy, nor is it viewed as a characteristic of hearing signers (Faurot et al., p. 3).

Faurot et al., went on to discuss the Geographic distinctions that exist in LSM. Geographic distinctions do not seem to be as important as other differences. The greatest lexical variations seem to result from three factors: religious differences (for religious terminology), age distinctions, and levels of education. Religious terminology differs from church to church (and between denominations) and from city to city. If there are two variations of a sign, sometimes the Deaf would refuse to use the sign that more closely resembled the corresponding ASL sign as "American influenced," if the church that used that sign had had an American missionary at some time. Educational level also influenced a person's signing. Those with more education were more likely to use signed Spanish or a more Spanish-influenced sign, and therefore less likely to be understood by those with less education.