The American Sign Language Phrase Book (39 page)

Copyright © 2008 by the Estate of Lou Fant and Barbara Bernstein Fant. Click here for terms of use
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I
N RECENT YEARS
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there has been a movement among U.S. deaf people to replace ASL signs for other nationalities with the signs used by the deaf people of those nationalities. The reasons for this were, first, to show respect for the sign language of those nationalities by using their sign. The second reason was that the ASL sign sometimes was a derogatory sign in the sign language of another country. The ASL sign for Sweden, for example, means "drunk" or "crazy" in Swedish sign language, so naturally Swedes objected to our using the sign to refer to them and their country. Japanese and Chinese deaf people did not like the ASL signs for their countries because they highlighted the facial features of Asians.

In this chapter, the signs marked with an asterisk (*) indicate the sign used by the deaf people of the nation to which the sign refers and are commonly known everywhere. Only those signs that are known by the international community to be truly representative of the signs used by the deaf people within the country are asterisked. (Please keep in mind that not all country signs will be listed here—instead, a select number will be demonstrated due to space limitations. I apologize in advance should any reader take offense.)