60 free Sign Language trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sign language is not one language and it is not mime. There are at least 150 distinct signed languages, ASL and BSL are mutually unintelligible, and each has grammar carried as much by the face and torso as by the hands. This quiz covers the linguistics (the five parameters, classifiers, non-manual markers, one- and two-handed alphabets), the history (Bonet's 1620 treatise, Digiti Lingua, l'Épée's Paris school, the Braidwood snub that sent Gallaudet to France, the Milan ban), and the languages themselves: ASL, BSL, Auslan and the BANZSL family, Irish Sign Language, International Sign and its Gestuno past, Plains Indian sign talk, the village signing of Martha's Vineyard and the language Nicaraguan schoolchildren built from scratch. There are questions on legal recognition too, from New Zealand's third official language to Finland's constitution and Papua New Guinea, plus Stokoe, Gallaudet, Deaf President Now, Marlee Matlin and Nyle DiMarco. Easy questions suit anyone learning their first signs; the expert tier covers 17th-century pamphlets and Gestuno's vocabulary count. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on sign language, its individual languages and their histories, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. For Deaf culture and history more broadly, try our Deaf trivia quiz.
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Q 01Is signing the same all over the world?
No, there are many distinct languages
Ethnologue lists about 150 and other atlases over 200; deaf Americans and deaf Britons cannot understand each other's signing.
Q 02How many sign languages did the 2021 edition of Ethnologue list?
150
The SIGN-HUB Atlas counts more than 200 and notes many are still undocumented.
Q 03Which is the most widely used sign language in the world, as of 2021?
Indo-Pakistani (IPSL)
Ethnologue ranks it the 151st most 'spoken' language on Earth even though it has no official recognition in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh.
Q 04Linguists describe signs using five 'parameters'. Which of these is one of them?
Handshape
The others are orientation, location, movement and non-manual expression such as facial cues.
Q 05In signed languages, much of the grammar of a sentence is produced 'non-manually', meaning with what?
The face and torso
ASL and BSL both mark yes/no questions with similar facial expressions.
Q 06A slightly open mouth with relaxed tongue means 'carelessly' in ASL. What does a similar expression mean in BSL?
Boring or unpleasant
It is a neat example of how non-manual signals are language-specific rather than universal.
Q 07What is the term for spelling out a word letter by letter using a manual alphabet?
Fingerspelling
It is mainly used to borrow words from a spoken language, and can spawn 'initialized' signs based on a word's first letter.
Q 08How many hands does the British manual alphabet use?
Two
Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language share the same two-handed alphabet.
Q 09In the British two-handed alphabet, how are the vowels represented?
By pointing to the fingertips
That vowel system survives from 17th-century British 'arthrological' alphabets built on the joints of the fingers.
Q 10What was the Latin title of the 1698 pamphlet with the earliest printed two-handed alphabet?
Digiti Lingua
Its anonymous author was himself unable to speak, and suggested the alphabet could also serve for secrecy or entertainment.
Q 11Who published the first modern treatise on sign-language phonetics in Madrid in 1620?
Juan Pablo Bonet
Its title translates as 'Reduction of letters and art for teaching mute people to speak'; Ponce de León's earlier alphabet came from monastic signs.
Q 12Which Spanish monk developed the first known manual alphabet used in deaf schools?
Pedro Ponce de León
Silent religious orders had long used signs, which gave him a ready-made vocabulary.
Q 13Which priest, the 'Father of the Deaf', founded Paris's first public deaf school in 1760?
Charles-Michel de l'Épée
Q 21What did the British Sign Language Act 2022 do?
Legally recognised BSL in England, Wales and Scotland
A GCSE in BSL is still being developed; none was available as of January 2026.
Q 22According to the British Deaf Association, roughly how many people in the UK use BSL?
151,000
About 87,000 of them are deaf; the estimate excludes professional interpreters.
Q 23BSL, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language are grouped into which language family?
BANZSL
All three descend from 19th-century BSL and share the same two-handed alphabet.
He decided on his mission after meeting two deaf sisters signing to each other in a Paris slum.
Q 14Two years after l'Épée's death, the National Assembly in Paris gave him what title?
Benefactor of Humanity
It also declared that deaf people had rights under the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Q 15Modern ASL is most closely related to the signing of which country?
France
Roughly 58% of ASL signs are cognate with Old French Sign Language, brought over by Laurent Clerc.
Q 16Roughly what share of modern ASL signs are cognates of Old French Sign Language signs?
About 58%
That is below the 80% threshold linguists use to call two varieties dialects, so ASL counts as a separate language.
Q 17Reliable estimates put the number of ASL users in the United States in what range?
250,000 to 500,000
No accurate census has ever been taken; the figure includes hearing children of deaf adults.
Q 18Why is ASL so different from British Sign Language despite the shared spoken language?
Britain's Braidwood school refused to teach Gallaudet without payment
Rebuffed in England in 1815, Thomas Gallaudet went to Paris instead and brought back French methods and Laurent Clerc.
Q 19In which city did Thomas Braidwood found Britain's first school for deaf children in 1760?
Edinburgh
Pupils there were given a fixed 'sign name' instead of a spoken name, a practice still central to Deaf communities.
Q 20In what year did the UK government formally recognise BSL as a language in its own right?
2003
Full legal recognition for England, Wales and Scotland came with the British Sign Language Act of 2022.
Q 24Which signed language is closely related to LSF and ASL rather than BSL, despite being used next door to Britain?
Irish (ISL)
Irish nuns took it to Catholic deaf schools in Australia, where it influenced Auslan.
Q 25Auslan is a 'zero-copula' language. What does that mean?
The verb 'to be' is not used
'To be' appears only when an English phrase is quoted and fingerspelled.
Q 26What was International Sign formerly called?
Gestuno
The name combined 'gesture' and 'oneness', but when first used at a 1976 congress in Bulgaria deaf delegates found it incomprehensible.
Q 27How many signs were listed in the World Federation of the Deaf's 1975 unification vocabulary book?
1,470
A World Federation of the Deaf committee had published its standardised vocabulary two years earlier.
Q 28International Sign is used mainly at World Federation of the Deaf meetings and which games?
The Deaflympics
Recent studies call it more complex than a typical pidgin, closer to a full sign language.
Q 29NZ Sign Language became New Zealand's third official language in 2006, alongside English and what?
Māori
The New Zealand Sign Language Act passed Parliament on 6 April 2006.
Q 30Which country wrote sign-language rights into its constitution in August 1995?
Finland
Section 17 guarantees the rights of sign users and those needing interpretation.