1.3 — Links
A full list of Charles Hockett's design features of human lanugage.
The following sites have good information on writing systems of the world:
- Writing systems on Wikipedia
- Omniglot
- Ancientscripts.com
- Writing Systems Around The World
- Languages of the world
A few useful sites on deaf sign languages:
- Sign language on Wikipedia (this page also contains links to a number of Wikipedia articles on particular deaf sign languages)
- Ethnologue lists 121 sign languages and provides basic information on them
- ASLInfo.com has information on American Sign Language
Aside from deaf sign languages, there are a number of auxiliary sign languages in use by hearing people. Ethnologue lists three such systems (referring to them as "sign languages"); this is doubtless an underestimate.
- In Aboriginal Australia a number of sign languages were used by widows (usually for six months or so after the death of their husband). See the Wikipedia entry on Australian Aboriginal sign languages.
- Plains Indian Sign Language was used mainly to facilitate communication between Native Americans residing Great Plains of the USA and Canada who spoke mutually unintelligible languages. Some useful websites are:
- Plains Indian Sign Language
- William Tomkins's American Indian Universal Sign Language, which contains a substantial list of signs
- Hand Talk: American Indian Sign Language
