I'm the only person playing mutes right now so I'll speculate about sign languages

[Sniblet]

Lyric Valana is retired. Kiertaa is not. Both are mute. Both are mine!

Sign language in Aurora is, astoundingly, not a super developed core aspect of the lore! I've built up a handful of headcanons around it, and I'm writing them down for public consideration. These could be mechanically implemented, but they'd be kind of pointless and a lot of work. These could be properly canonized, but I'm not applying to do that until I hear that my ideas aren't insane.

Sign language is mechanically implemented as just "sign language," and also Nal'rasan I guess. This is not how sign languages work! ASL is very dominant in the real world to my knowledge (I have literally not gone out of my way to research this), but it is not alone. Aurora's human territories should have at least a few as well! I've thought of four.

• Tau Ceti Sign Language (TCSL) is the mechanically supported sign language used on Horizon. It was developed in tandem with spoken Basic, and attempts to follow the same design principle of accessibility first. All you need to sign fluently is a set of working arms and hands. Just one arm is enough to finger-spell any letter or number. The face is not used at all. These limits make the language difficult to learn, both to sign and to read; encompassing a full vocabulary in just a person's hands means a lot of words look very similar, sometimes when they probably shouldn't. The upside is that any species except for vaurcae (their fingers are weird), with some struggles on the part of dionae, can sign it. TCSL is widespread in Tau Ceti territories and in the Coalition, where it narrowly wins against SSL in prevalence.
• Solarian Sign Language (SSL) is the direct successor to ASL after being refined and adapted to use the Mandarin, then Solarian alphabet. In contrast to TCSL, SSL is very reliant on facial expression. This makes it next to unusable, and often difficult to read, for any species apart from humans and shell frames. For those who can use it, SSL is much more intuitive than TCSL to pick up, and can communicate more complex ideas in fewer words. It encounters few shortcomings that TCSL does not, among them the fact that there is no unique word for "IPC" - a user must fingerspell it or, more often, sign "android" and let the reader interpret with context. It is overwhelmingly prevalent in Solarian territories including the Eridani Federation, and is dominant in the Empire of Dominia, which causes some difficulties where humans and sinta meet. The Serene Republic of Elyra makes widespread use of it, but officially supports a homegrown alternative.
• Elyran Standard Sign Language (ESSL) was developed alongside Elyran Standard. It solely exists for the purpose of giving Elyrans a sign language that isn't Solarian. The broad-strokes differences are minute, but their vocabularies are distinct enough that they are not mutually intelligible. Most bilinguals of SSL and ESSL can agree that, in practical terms, SSL is a superior medium. ESSL is simply more patriotic.
• Spacer Sign Language (begrudgingly, SpSL) is a venerable specialized "language" of signs developed early in the human Space Age, and it has barely changed since. In a vacuum, where voices don't travel, lighting is unreliable, and your face is always covered, spoken language and most sign languages simply do not work. SpSL uses broad movements to communicate, to compensate for the fact that the speaker may only be visible in silhouette. The trade-off is that SpSL vocabulary is extremely limited, utilitarian, and for some signs, is reliant on the speaker floating in zero-gravity. It functions well for its intended purpose: short, vital messages such as "There is a fucking carp behind you," "Please let me in," and "That is the sensor array." As subspace communication technology has developed and space travel has become more comfortable in general, SpSL has crept steadily closer to redundancy, but is still taught in a niche-elective-class sense, and is kept well alive in Scarab communities.

Aliens don't have as many sign languages as humans do. Skrell, vaurcae and dionae all have little use for them, as they have their psionics, their hivenet, and their rootsong.

I can imagine unathi having a pretty big deaf community after the whole nuclear war thing. They probably ussse a sssilent relative of Azaziba, and maybe a whole lot of unathi know it just becaussse of how many deaf lizardsss there are.

Tajarrra have Nal'rrrasan, but that's a hunt-speak, not a generrral language, and I believe it uses a few vocals. We don't know what the generrral tajarrran sign language scene looks like. The PRrrA may have picked up TCSL, but it's verrry unlikely that it is the firrrst generrral-use sign language to grrrace Adhomai, especially afterrr the arrrtillerrries of the Grrreat Warrr pounded theirrr extrrra-sensitive earrrdrrrums.

These latter two may also make use of SpSL in its designated use-case, considering human meddling in their Space Ages. Skrell might too, but not amongst themselves.

Edited January 18, 2024 by Sniblet
autohiss full

[Carver]

Given the unrealistic limitations of language slots I sadly couldn’t see any of these being added. You’d have notably far less consistency in finding fluent “speakers” than presently so if SL were divided.

Lorewise it seems fine, I don’t really have the experience to spot anything absurd or unrealistic here. I’d only be concerned that canonization would encourage some fellow to try and mechanically implement these - which, after thought, might only work on the ground of having a separate “accent” for sign language. But SL accents are a can of worms only best opened if we ever approach characters mechanically having separate accents per known language.