From:  Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Date:  23 Sep 2024 18:46:23 Hong Kong Time
Newsgroup:  news.alt119.net/sci.lang
Subject:  

International Day of Sign Languages (23 September)

NNTP-Posting-Host:  null

A serious one for a change. Proposed by the World Federation of the 
Deaf, accepted by the United Nations in 2018.
WFD "represents over 70 million deaf people worldwide who collectively 
use around 300 different sign languages."

Yes, 300. There's a list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sign_languages

A lot of them are highly localized, as you might expect. But they are 
not all independent local inventions. The table shows that some are 
historically derived from others, so that we have "families" analogous 
to spoken-language families.

New Zealand Sign Language was made an official language of NZ by Act of 
Parliament in 2006. The table says that American SL "is also officially 
recognized as a language in Canada", but I don't know if that's the same 
thing.

Practical importance? I don't know. Maybe no more than the International 
Day.