In sign languages the differences are often far greater than in English, especially because of the breaks in passing the language down through the generations. It is possible that a Deaf person of 15 will have very great difficulty in understanding the signing of someone in their eighties, and vice versa. We should bear in mind that this sort of language breakdown is seen in many minority languages in the world. Older and younger generations of the same family can be cut off from each other linguistically for several reasons.
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