Black American Sign Language

Right.

Also, what made Mike want to learn ASL? And I didn't know there's a black ASL, but that makes sense.

I wonder if there are signs for common black phrases like, I'm not one of your little friends and nigga, please.

Yep.

But yeah, black people have their own language.

And on top of that, like I said, it can be regional too.

So you probably have people like in North Carolina whose black ASL slang is not the same as somebody in Texas.

That's a good point, too.

But they're for sinners.

They had a specific, they're like, there is black ASL, like the same way that, you know, that there's the, whether you consider them, you know, dialects, American English.

Exactly.

Yeah.

[laughs] I don't know.

I, I, I'll be honest, this is the first I've ever heard of Black American Sign Language.

BASL.

BASL.

Used, uh, most commonly by deaf Black Americans in the-

Well, no duh

Hm.

I don't know if I've ever seen a Black deaf guy.

Exactly.

And in the US, famously, uh, African Americans were segregated from white Americans, and so you have Black American Sign Language, which is a distinct variety from white American Sign Language as well.

Um, so then getting into the phonetic stuff, I mean, what makes sign language so interesting is that you not only have one articulator, you have two articulators.

You have two hands that can do the same thing or different things, and then you also have the non-manual features that are expressed by the face and by other aspects of how the body presents.