Are you a boy or a girl? Answer with your hands. To say “boy,” put your hand to your forehead as if you’re grabbing an imaginary baseball cap. To say “girl,” fold your fingers down into your palm. Then, keeping your fist closed like that, use your thumb to trace from your ear to your jaw. Anyone who speaks American Sign Language will know exactly what you mean. But don’t try using those moves in England! People will just look at you confused!

Did you know that there are hundreds of kinds of sign language in the world? American Sign Language is closest to French Sign Language. But it is quite different from British Sign Language. In British Sign Language, to say “boy,” you would hold out your pointer finger and move it across your chin. To say “girl,” you would brush your pointer finger against your cheek. In Ghana, deaf people speak Adamorobe Sign Language. Deaf people in parts of Spain speak Valencian Sign Language. In Israel, deaf people might speak Yiddish Sign Language. No two sign languages are the same!

Sign language is perfect for deaf people because it is “spoken” with the hands and “heard” with the eyes. To learn sign language, you would have to look at pictures or watch someone perform it. Sometimes babies with good hearing even learn sign language. That’s because they can communicate with their bodies many months before they learn to use words.

People have used sign languages for a long time. No one is absolutely sure how, when, or where sign language was invented. Once, people thought children who could not hear should not go to school. What a mistake! Thanks to sign language, deaf people can learn all kinds of things!