What is implied, I think, closely resembles the tower of Babylon myth: once everybody could understand everybody with a single "language" (or there was such a communion of thought and intent, a common identity, that communication was not necessary). Now there are a million idioms and a billion idiots (ehm, sorry for the pun).
On the hand of Sign Language, I would swear that Lanbrili have a form of sign language (I don't remember if I read it). Fafhrd and Gray Mouser certainly had one.
Much more interesting, to me at least, is the vision
of a whole civilization based on Sign Language. A sort
of Deaf People. I believe they belong to Glorantha
somewhere.
If they are a civilization they need to record things.
How do they record knowledge?
We use sound (traditionally, apart from computer-geeks
like ourselves) to communicate and tact (writing) and
vision (reading) to record, via a phonetic alphabete.
But a Deaf People would use maybe other methods.
Ideograms or pictograms is a short answer.
A longer one would involve stereograms (little
sculptures) or rinograms (based on collection of
smells) or a new sense like earthsense...
Ok stop to the wild speculation for now.
Ciao,
Gian
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