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American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.
Fingerspelling is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets have often been used in deaf education and have subsequently been adopted as a distinct part of a number of sign languages. There are about forty manual alphabets around the world. Historically, manual alphabets have had a number of additional applications—including use as ciphers, as mnemonics and in silent religious settings.
Sign languages are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign languages are full-fledged natural languages with their own grammar and lexicon. Sign languages are not universal and are usually not mutually intelligible, although there are also similarities among different sign languages.
British Sign Language (BSL) is a sign language used in the United Kingdom and is the first or preferred language among the deaf community in the UK. Based on the percentage of people who reported 'using British Sign Language at home' on the 2011 Scottish Census, the British Deaf Association estimates there are 151,000 BSL users in the UK, of whom 87,000 are Deaf. By contrast, in the 2011 England and Wales Census 15,000 people living in England and Wales reported themselves using BSL as their main language. People who are not deaf may also use BSL, as hearing relatives of deaf people, sign language interpreters or as a result of other contact with the British Deaf community. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands, body, face and head.
Deafblindness is the condition of little or no useful hearing and little or no useful sight. Different degrees of vision loss and auditory loss occur within each individual. Because of this inherent diversity, each deafblind individual's needs regarding lifestyle, communication, education, and work need to be addressed based on their degree of dual-modality deprivation, to improve their ability to live independently. In 1994, an estimated 35,000–40,000 United States residents were medically deafblind. Helen Keller was a well-known example of a deafblind individual. To further her lifelong mission to help the deafblind community to expand its horizons and gain opportunities, the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults, with a residential training program in Sands Point, New York, was established in 1967 by an act of Congress.
Several manual alphabets in use around the world employ two hands to represent some or all of the letters of an alphabet, usually as a part of a deaf sign language. Two-handed alphabets are less widespread than one-handed manual alphabets. They may be used to represent the Latin alphabet or the Cyrillic alphabet.
Tactile signing is a common means of communication used by people with deafblindness. It is based on a sign language or another system of manual communication.
Manually Coded English (MCE) is a type of sign system that follows direct spoken English. The different codes of MCE vary in the levels of directness in following spoken English grammar. There may also be a combination with other visual clues, such as body language. MCE is typically used in conjunction with direct spoken English.
German Sign Language or Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS), is the sign language of the deaf community in Germany, Luxembourg and in the German-speaking community of Belgium. It is unclear how many use German Sign Language as their main language; Gallaudet University estimated 50,000 as of 1986. The language has evolved through use in deaf communities over hundreds of years.
Icelandic Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf community in Iceland. It is based on Danish Sign Language; until 1910, deaf Icelandic people were sent to school in Denmark, but the languages have diverged since then. It is officially recognized by the state and regulated by a national committee.
Japanese Sign Language, also known by the acronym JSL, is the dominant sign language in Japan and is a complete natural language, distinct from but influenced by the spoken Japanese language.
Turkish Sign Language is the language used by the deaf community in Turkey. As with other sign languages, TİD has a unique grammar that is different from the oral languages used in the region.
Manually coded languages (MCLs) are a family of gestural communication methods which include gestural spelling as well as constructed languages which directly interpolate the grammar and syntax of oral languages in a gestural-visual form—that is, signed versions of oral languages. Unlike the sign languages that have evolved naturally in deaf communities, these manual codes are the conscious invention of deaf and hearing educators, and as such lack the distinct spatial structures present in native deaf sign languages. MCLs mostly follow the grammar of the oral language—or, more precisely, of the written form of the oral language that they interpolate. They have been mainly used in deaf education in an effort to "represent English on the hands" and by sign language interpreters in K-12 schools, although they have had some influence on deaf sign languages where their implementation was widespread.
Kenyan Sign Language is a sign language used by the deaf community in Kenya and Somalia. It is used by over half of Kenya's estimated 600,000 deaf population. There are some dialect differences between Kisumu, Mombasa and Somalia.
Polish Sign Language is the language of the deaf community in Poland. Polish Sign Language uses a distinctive one-handed manual alphabet based on the alphabet used in Old French Sign Language and therefore appears to be related to French Sign Language. It may also have common features with Russian Sign Language and German Sign Language, which is related to the history of Poland during the Partitions, when Russification and Germanization significantly influenced the Polish language, and may also have borrowings from the sign language used in the Austrian partition. Its lexicon and grammar are distinct from the Polish language, although there is a manually coded version of Polish known as System Językowo-Migowy, which is often used by interpreters on television and by teachers in schools.
Italian Sign Language or LIS is the visual language used by deaf people in Italy. Deep analysis of it began in the 1980s, along the lines of William Stokoe's research on American Sign Language in the 1960s. Until the beginning of the 21st century, most studies of Italian Sign Language dealt with its phonology and vocabulary. According to the European Union for the Deaf, the majority of the 60,000–90,000 Deaf people in Italy use LIS.
Maritime Sign Language (MSL) is a sign language used in Canada's Atlantic provinces.
The deaf sign language of the nations of the former Yugoslavia, known variously as Croatian Sign Language, Kosovar Sign Language, Serbian Sign Language, Bosnian Sign Language, Macedonian Sign Language, Slovenian Sign Language, or Yugoslav Sign Language (YSL), got its start when children were sent to schools for the deaf in Austro-Hungary in the early 19th century. The first two local schools opened in 1840 in Slovenia and in 1885 in Croatia.
Igor Kusin is a linguist and author from Zagreb.
References
- 1 2 Croatian Sign Language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
- ↑ Diane Brentari, Sign Languages, Cambridge University Press, 2010. (p.xix)
- ↑ Herbert L. Colston, Albert N. Katz; Figurative language comprehension, Routledge, 2005. (p.316)
- ↑ Croatian Sign Language, Ethnologue
- ↑ Zakon o uporabi znakovnog jezika u Bosnia i Hercegovini
- 1 2 Bickford, J. Albert (2005) The Signed Languages of Eastern Europe, archived on Wayback Machine, 5 March 2016
- ↑ Croatia profile Archived 2011-07-20 at the Wayback Machine , The European Union of the Deaf
- ↑ Cynthia J. Kellett Bidoli, Elana Ochse; English in International Deaf Communication, Peter Lang, 2008. (p.347)
- ↑ A Basic Grammar of Croatian Sign Language Archived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ "Zakon o Hrvatskoj Radioteleviziji". Archived from the original on 2018-02-03. Retrieved 2011-02-24.
- ↑ "Tečaj HZJ". Archived from the original on 2018-04-22. Retrieved 2011-02-24.
- ↑ "Croatian Association of Deafblind Persons DODIR" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2021-07-02. Retrieved 2011-02-25.
- ↑ Information status and word order in Croatian Sign Language, Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, November–December 2007; 21(11–12): 1007–1017.
- ↑ "Single-handed alphabet". Archived from the original on 2018-05-04. Retrieved 2011-02-25.
- ↑ "Jednoručna abeceda". Archived from the original on 2012-09-20. Retrieved 2011-02-25.
