Second sign language; second Braille system

[pne]

I wonder how many native speakers of a sign language learn a second sign language. At a hunch, I’d imagine that fewer do than those who use a vocal language, if only because foreign languages are compulsory in many schools I know (which all use speech for instruction) but I don’t know whether the same is true for schools taught through the medium of sign language.

I also wonder what the situation is for readers of Braille: how many of them learn the Braille system of a foreign language. Here, I can much more easily imagine such a person learning a foreign (vocal) language at school, but I don’t know whether they would get taught the Brailly system used by native speakers of that language.

For example, would a German person learning English at school use German Braille to represent it, English Grade 1 Braille (which, I think, differs mostly only in a couple of punctuation marks from German basic Braille), or would they learn “proper” Grade 2 Braille (which, of course, has all sorts of different abbreviation rules compared to German contracted Braille)?

Comments

[viklikesfic]

Hmm. I'm guessing it depends on what you're counting as a distinct sign language. Though I doubt there are tons of, for example, native speakers of ASL who are also fluent in BSL, I think there are probably a lot of people who know two or more of ASL, Signed English, SEE, Cued Speech, or some form of home sign.

[pne]

Good point; I hadn't thought of that kind of thing. I suppose that does count as more than one sign language, though what I was thinking of was more like "how many learn a sign language associated with a different region" (i.e. a "foreign" one).

After thinking about it, people bilingual in, say, ASL and SEE is probably more similar to people who are bilingual in, say, Bavarian and Standard German (or Yorkshire English and Received Pronunciation); both are distinct but are used in the same region. And there are lots of people who are bilingual like that, but that's not quite what I was thinking of.

Still - thanks!