BANZSL

British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language (BANZSL, /ˈbænzəl/^[1]), or the British Sign Language (BSL) family, is a language family or grouping encompassing three related sign languages: British Sign Language, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The term BANZSL was coined informally by the linguists Trevor Johnston and Adam Schembri in the early 2000s. However, in 2024, Schembri remarked that the Wikipedia article on BANZSL had begun describing it with the more specific or authoritative meaning of "the language from which modern BSL and Auslan and New Zealand sign language have descended", a meaning that "took on a life of its own—something that we didn't intend".^[1] As a result, Schembri says he and Johnston have disowned the term due to pushback from Deaf communities, concerned that it is replacing the names of each of the three languages.^[1][2]

BANZSL
Geographic distribution	Great Britain, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Newfoundland and Labrador, Maritimes, Australia and New Zealand
Linguistic classification	One of the world's sign language families
Subdivisions	British Sign Auslan New Zealand Sign South African Sign Maritime Sign Northern Ireland Sign PNG Sign ?Swedish Sign
Language codes
Glottolog	bsli1234
Areas where BANZSL languages are signed   Areas where a BANZSL language is fading from use

BSL, Auslan and NZSL all have their roots in a Deaf sign language used in Britain during the 19th century. The three languages in question are related in their use of similar grammar, manual alphabet, and high degree of lexical overlap.

American Sign Language and the BANZSL varieties are not part of the same language family. However, there is still significant overlap in vocabulary, probably due largely to relatively recent borrowing of lexicon by signers of all three BANZSL varieties, with many younger signers unaware which signs are recent imports.

Between Auslan, BSL and NZSL, 82% of signs are identical (per Swadesh lists). When considering identical as well as similar or related signs there are 98% cognate signs between the languages. By comparison, ASL and BANZSL have only 31% signs identical, or 44% cognate.

According to Henri Wittmann (1991), Swedish Sign Language also descends from BSL. From Swedish SL arose Portuguese Sign Language and Finnish Sign Language, the latter with local admixture; Danish Sign Language is largely mutually intelligible with Swedish SL, though Wittmann places it in the French Sign Language family.

Anderson (1979) instead suggested that Swedish Sign, German Sign and British Sign share one origin in a "North-West European" sign language.^[3]

Languages

• BSL (sign attested from 1644 may not be BSL), with approximately 151,000 users^[4]
  • Australian SL (1860. ASL and ISL influences), with approximately 10 000 users ^[5]
    • Papua New Guinea Sign Language (c. 1990), which is a creole formed with Auslan, used by 30,000 people ^[6]
  • New Zealand SL (1800s), used by approximately 20,000 people ^[7]
  • Northern Ireland SL (19th century - with American Sign Language and Irish Sign Language influences)
  • South African SL (somewhere between 1846 & 1881), used by perhaps 235,000 people
  • Maritime SL (c. 1860), with perhaps 100 extant users ^[8]
  • ? Swedish Sign Language family (1800)
    • Swedish Sign Language (1800)
    • Finnish SL (1850s, with local admixture)
    • Finland-Swedish SL (1850s, a middle form between Finnish and Swedish SL)
    • Eritrean Sign (1955, with much local admixture)
    • Portuguese SL (1823)
    • Cape Verdian Sign (1990s, with local admixture)

BANZSL family tree
Old British Sign Language (c. 1760–1900) Maritime SL (c. 1860–present) Swedish SL family? (c. 1800–present) Papua NG SL (c. 1990–present) Auslan (c. 1860–present) New Zealand SL (c. 1870–present) British SL (c. 1900–present) Northern Ireland SL (c. 1920–present) South African SL (c. 1860–present)

See also

• Old French Sign Language – a contemporary of BANZSL
• French Sign Language family

Notes

1. "102: Signed Language Mailbag (with Adam Schembri, Christy Filipich, and Mark Ellison)". Because Language. 27 July 2024. Retrieved 26 August 2024.
2. Palfreyman & Schembri (2022).
3. Lucas, Ceil (2001-10-04). The Sociolinguistics of Sign Languages. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-79474-9.
4. "British Sign Language (BSL) Statistics".
5. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2013). "The distribution of Victorian sign language users" (PDF). Australian Bureau of Statistics. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 March 2016. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
6. ISO request part 1ISO request part 2
7. "2013 Census totals by topic". archive.stats.govt.nz. Archived from the original on 2017-11-22. Retrieved 2019-05-28.
8. Yoel, Judith. "Canada's Maritime Sign Language". Endangered Languages. Retrieved 10 February 2017.

References

• Johnston, T. (2003). BSL, Auslan and NZSL: Three signed languages or one? In A. Baker, B. van den Bogaerde & O. Crasborn (Eds.), "Cross-linguistic perspectives in sign language research: Selected papers from TISLR 2000" (pp. 47–69). Hamburg: Signum Verlag.
• McKee, D. & G. Kennedy (2000). Lexical Comparison of Signs from American, Australian, British, and New Zealand Sign Languages. In K. Emmorey and H. Lane (Eds), "The signs of language revisited: an anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima". Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
• Palfreyman, Nick; Schembri, Adam (2022). "Lumping and splitting: Sign language delineation and ideologies of linguistic differentiation". Journal of Sociolinguistics. 26 (1): 105–112. doi:10.1111/josl.12524.