By Emily Allen Pressure to avoid offending minorities has caught up with Britain’s 150,000 users of sign language for the deaf, according to a Government-funded report. It found that younger deaf people have changed the way they give the sign to say someone is gay, or to describe Chinese, French and Jewish people. The old gesture that meant gay – a flicked limp wrist – is now considered offensive among some users of British Sign Language, researchers at University College London said. Evolving: Britain's young deaf community have adapted signs they use so they don't offend other cultures Similarly it is no longer acceptable among politically correct deaf people to give a slanted eye sign to indicate something Chinese, nor to mime a hooked nose to mean a Jewish person.
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Today the only acceptable way to sign China is to indicate the shape of a Mao jacket, while the sign for a Jew is to make the shape of a beard
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Rather than flicking a limp wrist, a gay person is signed with an upright thumb on one hand in the palm of the other, wobbling from side to side
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It is no longer acceptable to point to the middle of their foreheads as the sign for India - instead they make the triangular shape of the subcontinent
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