International Sign Language Day

Teanga Chomharthaíochta na hÉireann: genesis of a gendered Irish sign language

23/09/2025 by Peter Bakker

Today it is September 23, and that means that it is International Day of Sign Languages, proclaimed as such by the General Assembly of the United Nations. This year, Lingoblog searched in vain for an expert in sign languages for the deaf to celebrate this with us. Peter Bakker fills in this year with a special sign language: Irish Sign Language, the only sign language for the deaf that has a so-called genderlect.

Irish sign language developed around schools for deaf girls and boys in the 1800s. It is documented that there were sign languages before that time as well in Ireland, but they were probably quite different across the country. When Irish deaf people were no longer kept at … ↪

A good sign! Myths about sign languages

13/06/202325/09/2020 by Linguistic Mythbusters

Lingoblog continues to celebrate International Day of Sign Languages! Today, Linguistic Mythbusters explode myths about sign languages.

Most people have a pretty clear intuition about the most basic idea behind sign language: If you, for some reason, can’t communicate efficiently through ‘normal’ language, you can use a language that consists of hand movements instead of sounds. But apart from this, there are actually quite a few misconceptions about sign language that flourish among people with normal hearing.

One of the biggest misconceptions about sign language is that it is one single language that has been designed deliberately to be used by deaf people. In reality, there are hundreds of different sign languages, which have all naturally emerged from interaction between … ↪