When did American Sign Language develop?
American Sign Language
ASL is sometimes incorrectly cited as the third- or fourth-most-spoken language in the United States.[1]:15, 22 These figures misquote Schein and Delk (1974), who actually concluded that ASL speakers constituted the third-largest population requiring an interpreter in court.[1]:15, 22 Although this would make ASL the third-most used language among monolinguals other than English, it does not imply that it is the fourth-most-spoken language in the United States, since speakers of other languages may also speak English.[1]:21–22