Sign Language Trivia
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107 free Sign Language trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 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.
30 of 107 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Is signing the same all over the world?
No, there are many distinct languages
No, there are many distinct languages: American Sign Language and British Sign Language are mutually unintelligible, with unrelated vocabularies and different manual alphabets.
Q 02How many sign languages did the 2021 edition of Ethnologue list?
150
The 2021 edition of Ethnologue listed 150 sign languages; the SIGN-HUB Atlas counts more than 200 and notes that many remain undocumented.
Q 03In signed languages, much of the grammar of a sentence is produced 'non-manually', meaning with what?
The face and torso
The face and torso carry grammar: raised eyebrows and a forward head tilt mark yes/no questions in ASL, and shifting the torso marks a change of speaker role.
Q 04What does ASL's 'carelessly' mouth gesture (slightly open, tongue relaxed) mean in BSL?
Boring or unpleasant
Boring or unpleasant is what that mouth gesture means in BSL, while ASL reads it as 'carelessly', a neat example of non-manual signals being language-specific rather than universal.
Q 05What is the term for spelling out a word letter by letter using a manual alphabet?
Fingerspelling
Fingerspelling uses a manual alphabet to borrow words such as names from a spoken language, and can spawn 'initialized' signs built on a word's first letter.
Q 06How many hands does the British manual alphabet use?
Two
Two hands are used: the British manual alphabet is two-handed, shared with Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language, unlike the one-handed American alphabet.
Q 07In the British manual alphabet, how are the vowels represented?
By pointing to the fingertips
By pointing to the fingertips of the non-dominant hand: the five vowels A, E, I, O and U are a touch to the thumb, index, middle, ring and little finger in turn.
Q 08What Latin-titled 1698 pamphlet contains the earliest printed ancestor of the BSL alphabet?
Digiti Lingua
Digiti Lingua, a 1698 pamphlet by an anonymous author who could not speak, printed the earliest pictures of that alphabet and suggested it could also serve for secrecy or entertainment.
Q 09Who published the first modern treatise on sign-language phonetics in Madrid in 1620?
Juan Pablo Bonet
Juan Pablo Bonet published his 'Reducción de las letras y arte para enseñar a hablar a los mudos' in Madrid in 1620, regarded as the first modern treatise on sign-language phonetics, with a one-handed manual alphabet.
Q 10Which Spanish Benedictine monk is credited with the first manual alphabet for teaching deaf pupils?
Pedro Ponce de León
Pedro Ponce de León, a 16th-century Benedictine at the monastery of Oña, taught deaf children of noble families and is credited with the first manual alphabet, adapted from signs used by silent religious orders.
Q 11Which priest, the 'Father of the Deaf', founded Paris's first public deaf school in 1760?
Charles-Michel de l'Épée
Charles-Michel de l'Épée opened his free school for deaf pupils in Paris in 1760 after meeting two deaf sisters signing to each other, and taught through 'methodical signs' rather than speech.
Q 12What title did the National Assembly give the late founder of Paris's deaf school in 1791?
Benefactor of Humanity
Benefactor of Humanity was the title the National Assembly voted him in July 1791, declaring too that deaf people had rights under the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
Q 13Modern ASL is most closely related to the signing of which country?
France
Q 21Auslan belongs to which sign-language family?
BANZSL
BANZSL (British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language) groups three signing varieties that descend from 19th-century BSL and share one manual alphabet.
Q 22Which signed language descends from LSF and is closer to ASL than to BSL?
Irish (ISL)
Irish (ISL) descends from French Sign Language, brought to Dublin's Catholic deaf schools in the 1840s by nuns trained in Caen; Irish nuns later carried it to Catholic deaf schools in Australia.
Q 23What does it mean that Auslan is a 'zero-copula' language?
The verb 'to be' is not used
Roughly 58% of ASL signs are cognate with Old French Sign Language, brought over by Laurent Clerc.
Q 14Roughly what share of modern ASL signs are cognates of Old French Sign Language signs?
About 58%
About 58% of ASL signs were found to be cognate with Old French Sign Language signs in James Woodward's 1978 study, leaving ASL a distinct language rather than a dialect of LSF.
Q 15Reliable estimates put the number of ASL users in the United States in what range?
250,000 to 500,000
250,000 to 500,000 is the usual estimate for ASL users in the United States; no accurate census has been taken, and the figure includes hearing children of deaf adults.
Q 16Why is ASL so different from British Sign Language despite the shared spoken language?
Britain's Braidwood school refused to teach Gallaudet without payment
Britain's Braidwood school refused to teach Gallaudet without payment, so in 1815 Thomas Gallaudet turned to Paris, learned the French method and brought Laurent Clerc back to open the Hartford school in 1817.
Q 17In which city did Thomas Braidwood found Britain's first school for deaf children in 1760?
Edinburgh
Thomas Braidwood opened his Academy for the Deaf and Dumb in Edinburgh in 1760, the first school of its kind in Britain; he moved it to Hackney, London, in 1783.
Q 18In what year did the UK government formally recognise BSL as a language in its own right?
2003
On 18 March 2003 the UK government formally recognised BSL as a language in its own right, a recognition that carried no legal protection at the time.
Q 19What did the British Sign Language Act 2022 do?
Legally recognised BSL in England, Wales and Scotland
Legally recognised BSL in England, Wales and Scotland: the British Sign Language Act 2022, a private member's bill from Rosie Cooper MP, received royal assent on 28 April 2022.
Q 20According to the British Deaf Association, roughly how many people in the UK use BSL?
151,000
151,000 people in the UK use BSL, of whom about 87,000 are deaf; the figure excludes professional users such as interpreters unless they also sign at home.
The verb 'to be' is not used: Auslan links subject and predicate directly, so a sentence such as 'she is a teacher' is signed without any equivalent of 'is'.
Q 24What was International Sign formerly called?
Gestuno
Gestuno was the name adopted in the 1970s for the World Federation of the Deaf's standardised vocabulary; it loosely combines 'gesture' and 'oneness', and was later renamed International Sign.
Q 25In which year was the World Federation of the Deaf founded?
1951
The World Federation of the Deaf was founded in Rome in September 1951, at the first World Congress of the Deaf; its congresses have been held roughly every four years since.
Q 26NZ Sign Language became New Zealand's third official language in 2006, alongside English and what?
Māori
Māori has been an official language since 1987; the New Zealand Sign Language Act, passed on 6 April 2006, made NZSL the third, alongside Māori and the de facto official English.
Q 27Which country wrote sign-language rights into its constitution in August 1995?
Finland
Finland guaranteed the rights of sign-language users in its fundamental-rights reform that took effect on 1 August 1995; the clause survives as Section 17 of the 2000 Constitution.
Q 28Papua New Guinean Sign Language became that country's fourth official language in what year?
2015
In May 2015 Papua New Guinea made its sign language the country's fourth official language, alongside English, Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu.
Q 29Greek Sign Language gained equal status with Modern Greek in which year?
2017
Law 4488 of 2017 recognised Greek Sign Language as equal to Modern Greek, building on its 2000 recognition as the official language of deaf education.
Q 30Iceland's 2011 law gave Icelandic Sign Language what status?
Mother tongue of those who rely on it, and their children
Mother tongue of those who rely on it, and their children: Iceland's 2011 language-status act gave it that standing, with a right to learn it from the moment deafness is diagnosed.