ASL variations

while in the process of learning ASL i have seen that there are so many variations for many/all signs online,

i am curious to know why this is and does it only differ between areas/communities? or is it more of an individual thing?

i think most of the variations are similar enough that it may not be difficult to figure it out if you're not familiar with the specific variation but does this make it difficult to sign between people from different areas? i suppose you can always spell the letters so maybe this is a stupid question

i'm sorry if this seems like a dumb question, i'm hearing and unfortunately not very immersed in the deaf community yet (i'm not very immersed in any sort of community really, due to severe anxiety issues)

I can't tell you anything about ASL, but I think it is pretty much the same as with german sign language. Here it differs between areas. There are many dialects. The sign for "son" in the south means "sunday" in the north, for example. Most of the time you can figure it out, if not, you just let the other person spell it. Yet mouthing is very important here, because you often have one sign with three or four different meanings, so it is quite easy to follow a conversation with two or three unknown words due to a dialect.
But I'm really curious how that works with ASL. Sorry I couldn't give you an answer to your question really.

Latascha said:

I can't tell you anything about ASL, but I think it is pretty much the same as with german sign language. Here it differs between areas. There are many dialects. The sign for "son" in the south means "sunday" in the north, for example. Most of the time you can figure it out, if not, you just let the other person spell it. Yet mouthing is very important here, because you often have one sign with three or four different meanings, so it is quite easy to follow a conversation with two or three unknown words due to a dialect.
But I'm really curious how that works with ASL. Sorry I couldn't give you an answer to your question really.

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thats okay! your answer was interesting thanks for the response.