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Auslan

As stated previously, Auslan is the language used by the Australian Deaf and non-vocal communities. Auslan is a dialect of British Sign Language. It is dissimilar to American Sign Language, although some signs have been adopted.

Auslan also has about 4000 signs in it. However, there are many ways these signs can be modified to alter the meaning slightly, and even more powerfully, signs can be combined to give new signs. Fingerspelling is not the same as Auslan, it is merely a fallback used fo proper names, words for which there is no sign and people who cannot sign Auslan but still need to communicate with Deaf.



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Mohammed Waleed Kadous 2002-12-10