Most people start their sign language journey by learning the A-Z or alphabet equivalent in sign form.
The use of the hands to represent individual letters of a written alphabet is called ‘fingerspelling’. It’s an important tool that helps signers manually spell out names of people, places and things that don’t have an established sign.
For example, most sign languages have a specific sign for the word tree, but may not have a specific sign for oak, so o-a-k would be finger spelled to convey that specific meaning.
Of course, not every language uses the Latin alphabet like English, so their sign language alphabet differs as well. Some manual alphabets are one-handed, such as in ASL and French Sign Language, and others use two-hands, like BSL or Auslan. Though there are similarities between some of the different manual alphabets, each sign language has its own style and modifications, and remains unique.
International Day of Sign Languages 