Editing American Sign Language (section)

== Population ==
Counting the number of ASL signers is difficult because ASL users have never been counted by the American census.<ref name="mitchell">{{Harvcoltxt|Mitchell|Young|Bachleda|Karchmer|2006}}</ref>{{rp|1}}{{efn|Although some surveys of smaller scope measure ASL use, such as the California Department of Education recording ASL use in the home when children begin school, ASL use in the general American population has not been directly measured. See {{Harvcoltxt|Mitchell|Young|Bachleda|Karchmer|2006|p=1}}.}} The ultimate source for current estimates of the number of ASL users in the United States is a report for the National Census of the Deaf Population (NCDP) by Schein and Delk (1974).<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|17}} Based on a 1972 survey of the NCDP, Schein and Delk provided estimates consistent with a signing population between 250,000 and 500,000.<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|26}} The survey did not distinguish between ASL and other forms of signing; in fact, the name "ASL" was not yet in widespread use.<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|18}}

Incorrect figures are sometimes cited for the population of ASL users in the United States based on misunderstandings of known statistics.<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|20}} Demographics of the deaf population have been confused with those of ASL use since adults who become deaf late in life rarely use ASL in the home.<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|21}} That accounts for currently-cited estimations that are greater than 500,000; such mistaken estimations can reach as high as 15,000,000.<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|1, 21}} A 100,000-person lower bound has been cited for ASL users; the source of that figure is unclear, but it may be an estimate of [[prelingual deafness]], which is correlated with but not equivalent to signing.<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|22}}

ASL is sometimes incorrectly cited as the third- or fourth-most-spoken language in the United States.<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|15, 22}} Those figures misquote Schein and Delk (1974), who actually concluded that ASL speakers constituted the third-largest population "requiring an interpreter in court".<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|15, 22}} Although that would make ASL the third-most used language among [[monolingual]]s other than English, it does not imply that it is the fourth-most-spoken language in the United States since speakers of other languages may also speak English.<ref name="mitchell"/>{{rp|21–22}}