American sign language (ASL) is a daugther language of French sign language and, although it is mainly used in America, it is incredibly distinct from spoken English. Since ASL is not a spoken language, no sounds exemplify periods of contact with other cultures, instead these periods of contact are exemplified by changing handshape, movement, and speed, as well as non-manual markers like facial expressions and body posture. For example, ASL is the parent language to Black American Sign Language (BSL), Indonesian Sign Language, and Filipino Sign Language, each of which is distinguishable from the other by these aforementioned characteristics as well as by new word signs that only exist in that particular sign language. Many of these were the result of a clear movement that discouraged the use of sign language in favor of the dominant spoken language of that geographic location, so the deaf and hard od hearing (HOH) community were forced to create their own "home-sign" language to communicate. So ASL is not only a variant of French sign lanaguage, it is also a combination of French sign language with "home-sign" language and regional forms of sign language that already existed within smaller, isolated deaf and HOH coomunities.
Understanding the ASL family and its historical origins will not only allow me to more easily learn other forms of sign language in the future, it will also help me understand the resiliency of lanaguage and how social, economic, and political factors can shape the dissemination of a language and the words it develops.
ASL continues to change however and linguists are able to track these changes through comparative analysis and computation methods like in the case of Quentin Atkinson and his colleagues at the University of Auckland in New Zeland. Again, because ASL is not a spoken language, I imagine that most of this comparative analysis and computation is occuring through video though.
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