 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(April 2020) |
| Estonian Sign Language | |
|---|---|
| eesti viipekeel (EVK) | |
| Native to | Estonia |
Native speakers | 1,500 (2011) [1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | eso |
| Glottolog | esto1238 |
| ELP | Estonian Sign Language |
Estonian Sign Language (Estonian : eesti viipekeel, EVK) is the national sign language of Estonia.
Research into the origins and nature of EVK did not begin until the late 1980s, so many details remain unknown. [2] Ulrike Zeshan (2005) concluded that, based on the historical influence of the German and Russian oral methods of deaf education, the fact that the first deaf school in Estonia was established in 1866 in Vändra in the Governorate of Livonia of the Russian Empire and the evident influence of Russian Sign Language (RSL) present in EVK, it most likely either derived from or was strongly influenced by RSL, thus making Estonian Sign Language a member of the French Sign Language family. [2] Taniroo (2007) found that 61% of Estonian and Russian signs of the 200-word Swadesh list were identical, confirming the hypothesis that EVK is either related to or has been significantly influenced by RSL through language contact. [2] However, as of 2016 there were 'no studies comparing EVK vocabulary with any other sign languages than Russian SL.' [2] : 50 Although the spoken and written Estonian and Finnish languages are closely related Finno-Ugric languages and there are some notable and probable Finnish Sign Language influences on EVK, there seems to have been 'no considerable historical language contact between EVK and Finnish Sign Language' (Hollman 2016). [2] : 48 In the unlikely event that EVK originally derived from Finnish Sign Language, it would belong to the Swedish Sign Language family.
Mahoney (2017) conducted the first-known 100-word Swadesh–Woodward list comparison of EVK and Latvian Sign Language, concluding that a possible relationship between them – as descending from VLFS, perhaps via ÖGS and/or RSL, as Wittmann (1991) and Bickford (2005) proposed – was 'still uncertain as it is unclear how sign languages disseminated in Eastern European countries during the Soviet Union, but aside from superficial impressions that the core lexicons are similar, signs with shared parameters displaying small variation in handshape while retaining 4 selected fingers suggests that these languages share a parent'. She added that '[a]t present there is no reason to assume that Estonian and Latvian sign language have a mother-daughter relationship'. [3]
In its formative stages, Estonian Sign Language was influenced by Russian and Finnish Sign Language; for example, the EVK sign for 'butterfly' developed from the Finnish sign for 'bird'.[ citation needed ] There are several dialects, the most archaic of which is the Pärnu variety. Like other sign languages, EVK is influenced by the local oral language. For instance, some signs are based on fingerspelling the first letter of an Estonian word, as in the sign for restoran, meaning 'restaurant'.[ citation needed ]
Instruction for parents of deaf children is available in Tallinn. Teaching and research began in 1990 at Tartu University.[ citation needed ]
In 1998 there were about 4,500 signers out of a deaf population of 2000 and a hearing-impaired population ten times that number.[ citation needed ] It is widespread in the cities of Tallinn and Pärnu among deaf ethnic Estonians; deaf Russians in Tallinn use Russian Sign Language, Russians outside Tallinn tend to use a Russian–Estonian Sign Language pidgin, or may be bilingual.[ citation needed ]
Estonian Sign Language was recognised as an independent language in 2007 under the Language Act. [2]
The Livonian language is a Finnic language. Although its last native speaker died in 2013, there are about 40 reported speakers and 210 having reported some knowledge of the language. The native land of the Livonian people is the Livonian Coast of the Gulf of Livonia, located in the north of the Kurzeme peninsula in Latvia. Possibly unique among the Uralic languages, Livonian has been described as a pitch-accent language.
French Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in France and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. According to Ethnologue, it has 100,000 native signers.
European route E 67 is an E-road running from Prague in the Czech Republic to Helsinki in Finland by way of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. It goes via Prague, Wrocław, Warsaw, Kaunas, Panevėžys, Riga, Tallinn and Helsinki.
Võro is a language belonging to the Finnic branch of the Uralic languages. Traditionally, it has been considered a dialect of the South Estonian dialect group of the Estonian language, but nowadays it has its own literary standard and is in search of official recognition as an indigenous regional language of Estonia. Võro has roughly 75,000 speakers (Võros) mostly in southeastern Estonia, in the eight parishes of the historical Võru County: Karula, Harglõ, Urvastõ, Rõugõ, Kanepi, Põlva, Räpinä and Vahtsõliina. These parishes are currently centred in Võru and Põlva counties, with parts extending into Valga and Tartu counties. Speakers can also be found in the cities of Tallinn and Tartu and the rest of Estonia.
Russians in the Baltic states describes self-identifying ethnic Russians and other primary Russian-speaking communities in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, collectively. As of 2017, there were ca 1 million ethnic Russians in the three Baltic countries, having declined from ca 1.7 million in 1989, the year of the last census during the Soviet era.
Stokoe notation is the first phonemic script used for sign languages. It was created by William Stokoe for American Sign Language (ASL), with Latin letters and numerals used for the shapes they have in fingerspelling, and iconic glyphs to transcribe the position, movement, and orientation of the hands. It was first published as the organizing principle of Sign Language Structure: An Outline of the Visual Communication Systems of the American Deaf (1960), and later also used in A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles, by Stokoe et al. (1965). In the 1965 dictionary, signs are themselves arranged alphabetically, according to their Stokoe transcription, rather than being ordered by their English glosses as in other sign-language dictionaries. This made it the only ASL dictionary where the reader could look up a sign without first knowing how to translate it into English. The Stokoe notation was later adapted to British Sign Language (BSL) in Kyle et al. (1985) and to Australian Aboriginal sign languages in Kendon (1988). In each case the researchers modified the alphabet to accommodate phonemes not found in ASL.
American Sign Language (ASL), the sign language used by the deaf community throughout most of North America, has a rich vocabulary of terms, which include profanity. Within deaf culture, there is a distinction drawn between signs used to curse versus signs that are used to describe sexual acts. In usage, signs to describe detailed sexual behavior are highly taboo due to their graphic nature. As for the signs themselves, some signs do overlap, but they may also vary according to usage. For example, the sign for "shit" when used to curse is different from the sign for "shit" when used to describe the bodily function or the fecal matter.
The official language of Estonia is Estonian, a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, which is related to Finnish. It is unrelated to the bordering Russian and Latvian languages, both of which are Indo-European.
Gary L. Browning is an American Russian language academic and was the first mission president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Russia, and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
The Estonian Rugby Union is the governing body of rugby union in Estonia and was formed in 2007 in response to FIRA-AER expulsion of the Estonian Rugby Federation. In June 2009 the Estonian Rugby Union formally received recognition as the governing body of Rugby Union in Estonia from the Estonian Olympic Committee with permission to represent Estonia at international level.
Rail Baltica is an ongoing greenfield railway infrastructure project to link Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with Poland and from there with the European standard gauge rail network. Its purpose is to provide passenger and freight service between participating countries and improve rail connections between Central and Northern Europe, specifically the area in the Southeast of the Baltic sea. Furthermore, it is intended to be a catalyst for building the economic corridor in Northeastern Europe. The project envisages a continuous rail link from Tallinn (Estonia) to Warsaw (Poland). It consists of links via Riga (Latvia), Kaunas and Vilnius (Lithuania) whose total length in the Baltic States is 870 kilometres (540 mi), with 213 kilometres (132 mi) in Estonia, 265 kilometres (165 mi) in Latvia, and 392 kilometres (244 mi) in Lithuania. Rail Baltica is one of the priority projects of the European Union. It is part of the North Sea–Baltic Corridor of the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).
The Baltic Finnic or Balto-Finnic peoples, also referred to as the Baltic Sea Finns, Baltic Finns, sometimes Western Finnic and often simply as the Finnic peoples, are the peoples inhabiting the Baltic Sea region in Northern and Eastern Europe who speak Balto-Finnic languages. They include the Finns, Estonians, Karelians, Veps, Izhorians, Votes, and Livonians. In some cases the Kvens, Ingrians, Tornedalians and speakers of Meänkieli are considered separate from the Finns.
The French Sign Language or Francosign family is a language family of sign languages which includes French Sign Language and American Sign Language.
American Sign Language literature is one of the most important shared cultural experiences in the American Deaf community. Literary genres initially developed in residential Deaf institutes, such as American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, which is where American Sign Language developed as a language in the early 19th century. There are many genres of ASL literature, such as narratives of personal experience, poetry, cinematographic stories, folktales, translated works, original fiction and stories with handshape constraints. Authors of ASL literature use their body as the text of their work, which is visually read and comprehended by their audience viewers. In the early development of ASL literary genres, the works were generally not analyzed as written texts are, but the increased dissemination of ASL literature on video has led to greater analysis of these genres.
The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic was an ethnically based administrative subdivision of the former Soviet Union covering the territory of Estonia in 1940–1941 and 1944–1991. The Estonian SSR was nominally established to replace the until then independent Republic of Estonia on 21 July 1940, a month after the 16–17 June 1940 Soviet military invasion and occupation of the country during World War II. After the installation of a Stalinist government which, backed by the occupying Soviet Red Army, declared Estonia a Soviet constituency, the Estonian SSR was subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union as a "union republic" on 6 August 1940. Estonia was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 and administered as a part of Reichskommissariat Ostland until it was reconquered by the USSR in 1944.
Russian Sign Language (RSL) is the sign language used by the Deaf community in Russia and possibly Ukraine, Belarus and Tajikistan. It belongs to the French Sign Language family.
Nepalese Sign Language or Nepali Sign Language is the main sign language of Nepal. It is a partially standardized language based informally on the variety used in Kathmandu, with some input from varieties from Pokhara and elsewhere. As an indigenous sign language, it is not related to oral Nepali. The Nepali Constitution of 2015 specifically mentions the right to have education in Sign Language for the deaf. Likewise, the newly passed Disability Rights Act of 2072 BS defined language to include "spoken and sign languages and other forms of speechless language." in practice it is recognized by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare, and is used in all schools for the deaf. In addition, there is legislation underway in Nepal which, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) which Nepal has ratified, should give Nepalese Sign Language equal status with the oral languages of the country.
Latvian Sign Language is a sign language commonly used by deaf people in Latvia. Linguists use LSL as an acronym for Latvian Sign Language.
Mall Nukke is an Estonian artist. A printmaker by training, she is primarily known for her paintings, collages and installations influenced by pop art. Mall Nukke emerged on the Estonian art scene in the early 1990s, her work at the period can be seen as commentary of nascent mass culture and consumer society in newly independent Estonia. Her early collages combined various cultural references and created new media characters based on real entertainers and public figures. Since the 2000s, Mall Nukke has concentrated on creating photo-manipulations and mixed media paintings inspired by Eastern Orthodox icon art.
Spreadthesign is an international online dictionary for several of the world's different sign languages. By searching for words and sentences you can see the corresponding signs. In the beginning there where only six sign languages represented. Spreadthesign is managed by the Non-governmental organization European Sign Language Centre in Örebro, Sweden. The organization is financed by funds through different projects and a lot of the work is supported by volunteers. Today there are more than 380,000 videos in the database of Spreadthesign and the work to expand the number of videos and sign languages is an ongoing process.
