Gestuno is a constructed sign language, which the World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf originally discussed in 1951. In 1973, a committee created and standardized a system of international signs. They tried to choose the most understandable signs from diverse sign languages to make the language easy to learn. The commission published a book with about 1500 signs. It does not have a concrete grammar, so some say that it is not a real language. The name "Gestuno" is from Italian, meaning "the unity of sign languages." Some deaf people use Gestuno at the World Games for the Deaf and the Deaf Way Conference and Festival in Washington, DC, but besides that its use is very limited. At formal meetings, interpreters are used, much like at UN meetings, however during breaks and informal communication Gestuno or a variation is used. In fact, it was these international meetings that caused the emergence of Gestuno.
There is another competing international sign language project called Signuno[?], which is a combination of Gestuno and the international auxilliary spoken language, Esperanto.
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