Research on American Sign Language has shown that it has ethnic variations. People will often feel most familiar with the signs used in their social groups in the community, and not those used by other groups.

Signers tend to mix with their families and their friends, work in different places, and socialise in different religious or sporting groups, or go to different deaf clubs.

Social groupĪnother important cause of variation is due to signers having different social networks. Another reason for this variation is that Auslan has not formally been taught or even recognised in the school system for many years, and there is no national television program in Auslan that can spread the same signs all over the country. It also exists because deaf students attended the schools in their state and do not have much contact with signers from other states. Some of this variation exists because the first British deaf migrants came from different parts of Britain and brought different dialects of British Sign Language with them. YESTERDAY).Įach state also has its own sign variation, and signers often talk about 'Adelaide signs' (Adelaide has a sign WHITE that is not found in other states) or 'Perth signs' (Perth has a sign BIRTHDAY that is not used in other states). These two different dialects traditionally had very different signs for numbers (e.g., ELEVEN) and colours (e.g., BLUE), as well as for some areas of the vocabulary (e.g. In Auslan, there appear to be two main dialects: the southern dialect used in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, and the northern dialect used in New South Wales and Queensland. Thus, there are many different dialects of English spoken around the world. In some areas of Australia, people say swimming costumes and potato scallop, and in other areas, they say bathers and potato cake. Some English speakers use the word trunk for a car boot, and some use the word vest for singlet. Regional variation also occurs in spoken languages. Accent refers to differences in how someone pronounces a word or makes a sign, not the use of different words or signs. Sometimes people call these differences an accent (e.g., people say someone from Sydney signs 'with a Sydney accent'), but this is incorrect. These different varieties of the same language are called regional dialects. Signers in one part of Australia may use different signs from signers in another part. One of the most important types of variation in Auslan is regional variation. Variation can occur in the vocabulary of the language (i.e., what signs a person uses), or in the grammar (i.e., how a signer combines these signs into sentences). There are a number of different causes of variation in Auslan.

It is a normal part of all language communities. Variation in language means the different users of a language have different ways of saying the same thing.

South australian spelling test