From: benlizro@ihug.co.nz

A serious one for a change. Proposed by the World Federation of the
Deaf, accepted by the United Nations in 2018.
WFD "represents over 70 million deaf people worldwide who collectively
use around 300 different sign languages."

Yes, 300. There's a list here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sign_languages

A lot of them are highly localized, as you might expect. But they are
not all independent local inventions. The table shows that some are
historically derived from others, so that we have "families" analogous
to spoken-language families.

New Zealand Sign Language was made an official language of NZ by Act of
Parliament in 2006. The table says that American SL "is also officially
recognized as a language in Canada", but I don't know if that's the same
thing.

Practical importance? I don't know. Maybe no more than the International
Day.

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