Editing Languages of the United States (section)

=== American Sign Language ===
'''[[American Sign Language]]''' (ASL) is the native language of a number of [[deaf]] and hearing people in America (roughly 100,000 to 500,000). While some sources have stated that ASL is the third most frequently used language in the United States, after English and Spanish,<ref name=preston1995p243>{{Citation|author=Paul Preston|title=Mother father deaf: living between sound and silence |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=l-q_qaxGTJUC|year=1995|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-58748-9|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=l-q_qaxGTJUC&pg=PA243 243]|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160102091443/https://books.google.com/books?id=l-q_qaxGTJUC|archive-date=January 2, 2016}}</ref> recent scholarship has pointed out that most of these estimates are based on numbers conflating deafness with ASL use, and that the last actual study of this (in 1972) seems to indicate an upper bound of 500,000 ASL speakers at the time.<ref name=gallaudet2006>{{Citation|last1=Mitchell |first1=Ross E. |last2=Young |first2=Travas A. |last3=Bachleda |first3=Bellamie |last4=Karchmer |first4=Michael A. |title=How Many People Use ASL in the United States? Why Estimates Need Updating |journal=Sign Language Studies |volume=6 |issue=3 |pages=306–335 |year=2006 |url=http://www.ncdhhs.gov/mhddsas/deafservices/ASL_Users.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604191021/https://www.ncdhhs.gov/mhddsas/deafservices/ASL_Users.pdf |archive-date=June 4, 2011 |doi=10.1353/sls.2006.0019 |s2cid=146557236 }}</ref>

*[[Black American Sign Language]] (BASL) developed in the southeastern US, where separate residential schools were maintained for white and black deaf children. BASL shares much of the same vocabulary and grammatical structure as ASL and is generally considered one of its dialects.<ref name="EthnologueASL" /><ref name=preston1995p243 /><ref>{{Citation|author-link1=Clayton Valli|author-link2=Ceil Lucas|author1=Clayton Valli |author2=Ceil Lucas|title=Linguistics of American Sign Language: an introduction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mfS3GlTLAUMC |year=2000 |publisher=Gallaudet University Press|isbn=978-1-56368-097-7|pages=416–428|chapter=Sociolinguistic Aspects of the Black deaf Community |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mfS3GlTLAUMC&pg=PA416|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160102091443/https://books.google.com/books?id=mfS3GlTLAUMC|archive-date=January 2, 2016}}</ref>