Eli5 Why are there different variants of sign language? Couldn’t one form become universal and be understood by all people regardless of language?
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Because sign language predates VCRs, television, and the ability to wake up on one side of the planet and fall asleep on the other side. There was no convenient way to transmit the gestures of a visual language when sign languages were being developed, and there was little demand for a single international standard when it took weeks to cross an ocean.
By the time we had steam engines or internal combustion engines, regional sign languages were already in place. No single sign language ever became an international standard for the same reason that Esperanto never really took off.
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