How sign languages shape the world of food

In American Sign Language, the sign for potato is two fingers tapping a fist — like testing a cooked tuber with a fork. In most European sign languages, and Japanese, it is based on peeling, though the Japanese version suggests the smaller, bumpier potatoes common there. In Indian Sign Language (ISL), you bring a fist close to your mouth, though another version has fingers making a round shape, then a cutting sign.

Most non-signing people are familiar with sign language from films like the Oscar-winning CODA [2021] or the late Nana Patekar’s Khamoshi [1996]. Patekar spent a year learning ISL for the role. We’ve also seen the rapid gestures of deaf people conversing with each other in public. But most of us have little idea that signing languages across the world differ as much as vocalised languages, including within the same country.

Just as with Esperanto, there have been attempts to create an international signing system, sometimes called Gestuno. But most sign languages evolved naturally, reflecting their cultures. They also change with time, as one ISL expert explained with the word for ‘vegetables’. It used to be fingers joined to make a pushing gesture, but now is a hand making a chopping sign: “The old sign was based on fixed blade cutters, but now regular knives are more common and the new sign shows that.


Sign languages have opponents. We are familiar with Alexander Graham Bell as the inventor of the telephone, but he was also deeply involved with deaf people. Bell believed they should adapt to the hearing world, learning lip reading and trying to speak, however poorly. He advocated suppressing sign languages, making him a villain to many deaf people. Some of that attitude has lingered in India. Abroad, it is common to see sign language interpreters at public events, or on TV, but such public ISL use is comparatively rare.

The ISL word for ‘vegetables’ used to be fingers joined to make a pushing gesture, but now is a hand making a chopping sign

GN Devy’s magnificent People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI) is one initiative that gives ISL its due. Volume 38 is on sign languages in India, documenting early histories, including from places like Alipur, a village near Bengaluru. So many congenitally deaf people were born there that a local sign language developed. Attempts to create unified ISL only started in the 2000s, and it is still a dynamic process. The PLSI affirms that this makes ISL “unique in that it is the only pan - Indian indigenous language in the country”.

The book also documents other forms of gestural communication, like the mudras used in classical Indian dance. Fingers opening and making a round shape can signify a mango. Restaurants also have systems. The owner of Shree Thaker Bhojanalay, the popular Mumbai thali restaurant, once showed me the gestures used to signal the servers, across the crowded noisy room, which diners needed different items. High end restaurants across the world also have such systems, to ensure that the service is silent and speedy. An inclined hand, for example, may mean: Bring water. The same gesture with fluttering fingers means sparkling water.

Sign languages are far more sophisticated than such basic gestures, but what is common is a link to the physical. Sign languages can communicate abstract concepts, but their evolution from practical needs grounds them in the world in which they are formed. It’s notable how the word for food or eating in most languages is simply hands going to the mouth. The expert who showed the signs for vegetables, also told me that even those using different sign languages find ways to communicate. Signing wasn’t just about shapes, but an ability to understand.

The future of sign languages isn’t certain. Technology ranging from cochlear implants that directly stimulate the auditory nerve and AI-driven conversion of spoken words to text is giving renewed strength to Bell’s anti-signing position. Yet, sign languages are such powerful testaments to the human need for, and ingenuity in communication, one hopes they will always shape their own space.