British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language (BANZSL) is the language of which
British Sign Language (BSL),
Auslan and
New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) may be considered dialects. These three languages may be considered dialects of a single language (BANZSL) due to their use of the same grammar and
manual alphabet and the high degree of lexical overlap. The term BANZSL was coined by
Trevor Johnston and
Adam Schembri.
BSL, Auslan and NZSL all have their roots in a deaf sign language used in Britain during the 19th century.
American Sign Language and BANZSL are unrelated sign languages. However, there is still significant overlap in vocabulary, probably due largely to relatively recent borrowing of lexicon by signers of all three dialects of BANZSL, 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.
Johnston, T. (2002). 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.
^a Sign-language names reflect the region of origin. Natural sign languages are not related to the spoken language used in the same region. For example, French Sign Language originated in France, but is not related to French. Conversely,
ASL and
BSL both originated in English-speaking countries but are not related to each other; ASL however is related to
French Sign Language.
^b Denotes the number (if known) of languages within the family. No further information is given on these languages.