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ASL is a distinguished language from spoken languages. Below are some examples of how ASL is different from spoken languages.

1. The origin of American Sign Language (ASL) began with the introduction of education for the Deaf in the United States around 1817 in Hartford, Connecticut by an American Dr. Thomas Gallaudet and a Deaf teacher from Paris, France, Laurent Clerc. Although ASL was originally viewed as a form of gestural communication, the 1965 research of ASL by Dr. William Stokoe led to the discovery that ASL meets the criteria of a language and possesses a clearly structured grammatical system like spoken languages.

2. ASL is not a universal language, although it is one of the most common sign languages used across the world. There are more than 300 sign languages used across the world, each with their own vocabulary signs and grammatical structure.

3. ASL is a visual-spatial language and its grammatical structure is different from English. Unlike English, which has a spoken and written form, there is no written form of ASL.

4. When signing occurs in ASL, facial movements are not facial expressions, but actually convey grammatical information. For example, the position of the eyebrows are non-manual markers for grammatical purposes; non-manual signals convey feelings, thoughts, or opinions; mouth morphemes serve as adjectives, adverbs, or convey descriptive meaning; eye gaze marks a location spatially; head shaking indicates negation; and head nodding indicates affirmation.

5. Fingerspelling in ASL is used to spell out a word.  It is not meant to spell out each letter of a word.