So I’ve been helping someone with some world building and I’ve come up with something I’m actually kind of satisfied with. We started out just trying to come up for a reason that sign language would be a major part of a city’s culture. Because the inhabitants are human, we decided a good chunk of people need to be at least somewhat deaf, such as someone who stands around large artillery without earmuffs, while taking orders from an officer who needs to convey a very large amount of information quickly across long distances. This means that in formal settings, you are expected to be making large hand gestures to emphasize your point, but formal settings aren’t everything. The general populous view joining the military for at least a while a matter of pride, because most of the food and national defense comes from hunting the air leviathans (don’t bother asking), so more people than just full time soldiers learn the sign language, but crowd streets and tight corridors make the large gestures hard, so they sign smaller and faster, to the point where they hold three conversations at the same time, one with the voice and one on each hand, which while obviously being a stretch for a real human to emulate, was simply to funny to pass up. I don't know much about actual linguistics, let alone sign languages, so I cannot speak on that front.

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