Auslan vs Sign English: what’s the difference?

One is a language. The other was a system.

Auslan is a natural language. Nobody sat down and designed it. It grew inside the Australian Deaf community out of the signing brought here from Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century, and it has its own vocabulary, its own word order, and grammar that works in ways English does not. Our history of Auslan guide traces how that happened.

Sign English is a different kind of thing entirely. The version used here, Australian Sign English, was an artificial system for producing each part of English on the hands, developed by a committee in the 1970s for the purpose of teaching deaf children. It was never a language a community grew up using with each other. It was a teaching tool, and it was made for deaf children rather than by Deaf adults.

That is the whole difference in one sentence: Auslan is what Deaf Australians use with each other, and Sign English was a way of showing English to them.

Side by side

Where Sign English came from

For much of the twentieth century, deaf education in Australia was oral: children were taught to speak and lipread, and signing was discouraged in the classroom. Sign English arrived as part of the reaction against that. By the 1970s it was increasingly accepted that deaf children needed visual language, and a committee of Australian and New Zealand educators of the deaf developed Australian Sign English in response.

The reasoning behind it deserves to be stated fairly. Deaf children were leaving school with weak written English. The hope was that if English could be made visible — every word, every ending, in order — children would absorb its structure the way hearing children absorb it from speech. Sign English was adopted into Australian deaf education from the late 1970s and was widely used through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

It is worth saying plainly that the teachers and parents who used it were, on the whole, trying to do right by deaf children with the understanding available at the time. What was missing was the Deaf community’s own view of the matter, and the recognition that Auslan was already a complete language sitting right there.

What Sign English looks like in practice

Sign English takes an English sentence and produces it in order, roughly a sign per word. Most of those signs were borrowed from Auslan, because the vocabulary already existed. What had to be invented were the parts of English that Auslan has no signs for: markers for word endings, plurals, tenses, and the small grammatical words English uses and Auslan handles in other ways.

Auslan does not work like that, and the gap is bigger than word order. Auslan uses the space in front of the signer to track who did what to whom, and facial expression carries grammar rather than just feeling. A question, a condition, a negation: these are marked on the face and in the movement, not by adding more signs. Putting English words in a line and signing them one after another leaves all of that out.

Why Australian deaf education moved on

Sign English is not widely used in the Deaf community and is not actively taught in schools today. Two things shifted underneath it. The first was linguistic research establishing that signed languages are full natural languages, which made it much harder to treat Auslan as a rough approximation of English. The second was Deaf community advocacy, and the recognition that followed: the Australian Government formally recognised Auslan as a legitimate language in 1987.

Deaf education in Australia has since moved towards bilingual approaches, where Auslan is used as a language in its own right and English is taught alongside it, largely through reading and writing. The premise changed: the goal is no longer to approximate English with the hands, but to give a child a first language they can acquire fully and then use to learn everything else.

The mark it left on Auslan

Sign English did not vanish without trace. Two decades of use in schools left signs behind, and it has influenced the vocabulary of Auslan in some age groups and regions. Signers who went through school during that period may use signs that entered the language this way, sometimes without the distinction being remembered at all.

For a learner this is mostly a reason not to be surprised. If a sign you meet from an older signer does not match what your class taught you, the explanation may be generational rather than regional, though regional variation accounts for plenty of it too. Neither is a problem to solve. It is what a living language looks like.

What this means if you are learning

Learn Auslan. It is the language of the Australian Deaf community, and it is what you will need for real conversation, for interpreting and education contexts, and for being part of community life. Signing English word order will not get you there, because Auslan grammar is the part you would be skipping.

The practical trap is older material. Signing books, printed dictionaries and school-era resources from the 1980s and 1990s sometimes teach Sign English signs or English word order without labelling themselves as anything other than “sign language”. If a resource presents signing as a word-for-word substitution for English sentences, that is the tell. Auslan resources will tell you Auslan has its own grammar, because it does.

One more system is worth naming so you do not confuse it with either. Key Word Sign, known as Makaton in Australia before it was renamed, uses Auslan signs alongside speech to sign only the key words in a sentence, and supports people with communication difficulties. It is not Sign English and it is not Auslan. We touch on it in our guide to teaching your baby Auslan signs.

As for how to learn Auslan itself, the best way is a class taught by a Deaf teacher: only a person can watch your signing and tell you when it is unclear, and only the community the language belongs to can pass on the culture that comes with it. Our guide to Auslan courses and classes covers what is available in Australia. An app like Auslearn is for the days between lessons, keeping vocabulary fresh — not a replacement for a teacher.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Auslan and Sign English?

Auslan is a language and Sign English is a system. Auslan developed naturally in the Australian Deaf community and has its own grammar, word order and vocabulary. Australian Sign English was designed by a committee in the 1970s to represent English on the hands, following English word order with a sign for each part of an English sentence. Auslan is what Deaf Australians actually use with each other.

Is Sign English a language?

No. Sign English is a manual code for English rather than a language in its own right. It borrows signs, mostly from Auslan, and arranges them in English word order with added markers for English word endings. Linguists describe it as an artificial system, and it has no community of native signers who grew up using it as their first language.

Why was Sign English used in Australian schools?

It was introduced into deaf education from the late 1970s with the aim of improving deaf children's English literacy, on the theory that seeing English represented on the hands would help children acquire written English. It was widely used through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Australian deaf education has since moved towards bilingual approaches that treat Auslan as a language in its own right, and Sign English is not actively taught in schools today.

Should I learn Auslan or Sign English?

Learn Auslan. It is the language of the Australian Deaf community and what you will need for real conversation, interpreting, education and community life. Sign English is not widely used today, and learning English word order on the hands does not teach you Auslan grammar. Be a little careful with older signing books and school-era materials, which sometimes teach Sign English signs or English word order without saying so.

Is Key Word Sign the same as Sign English?

No, they are different things. Key Word Sign, known as Makaton in Australia before it was renamed, uses Auslan signs alongside speech to sign only the key words in a sentence, and is used to support people with communication difficulties. Sign English aimed to represent every part of an English sentence on the hands and was used as a medium of instruction in deaf education. Neither is Auslan.

Sources and further reading

The factual claims in this guide were checked against the following community, government and research sources.

• Auslan glossary: Signed English — Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority
• Sign language - Auslan — Better Health Channel, Victorian Government
• Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics — Johnston & Schembri, Cambridge University Press (2007)
• History of Auslan — Auslan Signbank
• National Policy on Languages — Australian Parliament, Parliamentary Paper No. 132 (1987)

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