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Indo-Pakistani Sign Language | |||
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Native to | India, Pakistan, Bangladesh | ||
Signers | 6,000,000 in India (Indian Sign Language, ins), 1,080,000 in Pakistan (Pakistan Sign Language, pks) (2021)[ citation needed ] | ||
Possibly related to Nepalese Sign | |||
Dialects |
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Language codes | |||
ISO 639-3 | Variously: ins – Indian Sign Language pks – Pakistani Sign Language wbs – West Bengal Sign Language | ||
Glottolog | indo1332 Indo-Pakistani Sign indi1237 Indian SL paki1242 Pakistan SL | ||
Area of use by country. Native Countries Partial Users Non-native users on large scale |
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL) is the predominant sign language in the subcontinent of South Asia, used by at least 15 million deaf signers. [1] [2] As with many sign languages, it is difficult to estimate numbers with any certainty, as the Census of India does not list sign languages and most studies have focused on the north and urban areas. [3] [4] As of 2021, it is the most used sign language in the world, and Ethnologue ranks it as the 151st most "spoken" language in the world. [5]
Some scholars regard varieties in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and possibly Nepal as variety of Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. Others recognize some varieties as separate languages. The ISO standard currently distinguishes:
This section needs additional citations for verification .(April 2020) |
Deaf schools in South Asia are overwhelmingly oralist in their approach. [6] Unlike American Sign Language (ASL) and sign languages of European countries, IPSL does not have much official government support. The Deaf communities of the Indian subcontinent are still struggling for IPSL to gain the status of sign language as a minority language. Though sign language is used by many deaf people in the subcontinent, it is not used officially in schools for teaching purposes.
In 2005, the National Curricular Framework (NCF) gave some degree of legitimacy to sign language education, by hinting that sign languages may qualify as an optional third language choice for hearing students. NCERT in March 2006 published a chapter on sign language in a class III textbook, emphasising the fact that it is a language like any other and is "yet another mode of communication." The aim was to create healthy attitudes towards the disabled.[ citation needed ]
Strenuous efforts have been made by Deaf communities, NGO's, researchers and other organisations working for people with hearing disabilities , including the All India Federation of Deaf (AIFD), National association of the Deaf (NAD) in the direction of encouraging ISL. Until 2001, no formal classes for teaching ISL were conducted in India. During this period, Ali Yavar Jung National Institute of Hearing and the Handicapped (AYJNIHH), Mumbai, established an ISL cell. It started a course called "Diploma in India Sign Language Interpreter Course". The curriculum designed for the course aims to develop professional communication in Sign language and ability to interpret professionally. It also focused on the basic understanding of the Deaf community and Deaf culture. Later, the course was offered in the regional centers, in Hyderabad, Bhuvaneshwar, Kolkata and Delhi.[ citation needed ]
Besides AYJNIHH, organisations like the Mook Badhir Sangathan in Indore and several other organisations offer ISL classes. Many NGOs all over the India use ISL to teach English and various academic and vocational courses. These NGOs include ISHARA (Mumbai), Deaf Way Foundation (Delhi), the Noida Deaf Society and Leadership Education Empowerment of the Deaf (LEED) (Pune), Speaking Hands Institute for the Deaf (Punjab), etc. (Randhawa, 2014). The associations like the Association of Sign Language Interpreters (ASLI) and the Indian Sign Language Interpreters Association (ISLIA) were established in 2006 and 2008 respectively for the professional development of Interpreters in India. Two schools have been established in India which follow bilingual approach to teach deaf students. The schools are the Bajaj Institute of Learning (BIL) in Dehradun and Mook Badhir Sangathan in Indore. Apart from the establishment of organisations working for Deaf people there has been a spurt in research on sign language in India. Recent research developments include the studies by research scholars of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the University of Delhi including Wallang, 2007; Sinha, 2003,2008/2013; Hidam, 2010; Kulsheshtra, 2013. There is also work on problems and awareness of IPSL and typology of IPSL verbs (Morgan 2009,2010). Apart from these there have been continued works by scholars on linguistic aspects of IPSL as well as on varieties of IPSL (Bhattacharya and Hidam 2010, Aboh, Pfau, and Zeshan 2005, Zeshan and Panda 2011, Panda 2011, Panda 2012). Steps taken by the Government of India to promote sign language include the establishment of the ISLRTC. However, currently the autonomy of the Research centre is a contentious issue, which is yet to be resolved.[ citation needed ]
Pakistan has a deaf population of 0.24 million, which is approximately 7.4% of the overall disabled population in the country. [7]
There are many varieties of sign language in the region, including many pockets of home sign and local sign languages, such as Ghandruk Sign Language, Jhankot Sign Language, and Jumla Sign Language in Nepal, and Alipur Sign Language in India, which appear to be language isolates. There are also various Sri Lankan sign languages which may not even be related to each other. However, the urban varieties of India, Pakistan, Nepal (Nepalese Sign Language), and Bangladesh are clearly related (although, for Nepalese Sign Language at least, it is not clear whether the relation is genetic, or perhaps rather one of borrowing compounded by extensive incorporation of a shared South Asian gestural base). There is disagreement whether these related varieties should be considered separate languages.
While the sign system in IPSL appears to be largely indigenous, elements in IPSL are derived from British Sign Language. For example, most IPSL signers nowadays use fingerspelling based on British Sign Language fingerspelling, with only isolated groups using an indigenous Devanagari-based fingerspelling system (for example, Deaf students and graduates of the school for the deaf in Vadodara/Baroda, Gujarat). In addition, more recently contact with foreign Deaf has resulted in rather extensive borrowing from International Signs and (either directly or via International Signs) from American Sign Language. A small number of the Deaf in and around Bengaluru are often said to use American Sign Language (owing to a longstanding ASL deaf school there); however it is probably more correct to say that they use a lexicon based largely on ASL (or Signed English), while incorporating also a not inconsequential IPSL element. Furthermore, regardless of the individual signs used, the grammar used is clearly IPSL and not ASL.[ citation needed ]
The Delhi Association for the Deaf is reportedly working with Jawaharlal Nehru University to identify a standard sign language for India. [12]
Although discussion of sign languages and the lives of deaf people is extremely rare in the history of South Asian literature, there are a few references to deaf people and gestural communication in texts dating from antiquity. [13] Symbolic hand gestures known as mudras have been employed in religious contexts in Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism for many centuries, although Buddhism have often excluded deaf people from participation in a ritual or religious membership. [14] In addition, classical Indian dance and theatre often employs stylised hand gestures with particular meanings. [15]
An early reference to gestures used by deaf people for communication appears in a 12th-century Islamic legal commentary, the Hidayah. In the influential text, deaf (or "dumb") people have legal standing in areas such as bequests, marriage, divorce and financial transactions, if they communicate habitually with intelligible signs. [16]
Early in the 20th century, a high incidence of deafness was observed among communities of the Naga hills. As has happened elsewhere in such circumstances (see, for example, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language), a village sign language had emerged and was used by both deaf and hearing members of the community. Ethnologist and political officer John Henry Hutton wrote:
As one might expect ... of men without the art of writing, the language of signs has reached a high state of development... To judge how highly developed is this power of communicating by signs, etc., it is necessary only to experience a Naga interpreter's translation of a story or a request told to him in sign language by a dumb man. ... Indeed the writer has known a dumb man make a long and detailed complaint of an assault in which nothing was missing except proper names, and even these were eventually identified by means of the dumb man's description of his assailants' dress and personal appearance. [17]
(See Naga Sign Language.) However, it is unlikely that any of these sign systems are related to modern IPSL, and deaf people were largely treated as social outcasts throughout South Asian history.
Documented deaf education began with welfare services, mission schools and orphanages from the 1830s, and "initially worked with locally-devised gestural or signed communication, sometimes with simultaneous speech." [18] Later in the 19th century, residential deaf schools were established, and they tended (increasingly) to adopt an oralist approach over the use of sign language in the classroom. These schools included The Bombay Institution for Deaf-Mutes, which was founded by Bishop Leo Meurin in the 1880s, [19] and schools in Madras [20] and Calcutta [21] which opened in the 1890s. Other residential schools soon followed, such as the "School for Deaf and Dumb Boys" at Mysore, founded in 1902, [22] a school in Dehiwala in what is now Sri Lanka, founded in 1913, [23] and "The Ida Rieu School for blind, deaf, dumb and other defective children", founded in 1923 in Karachi, in what is now Pakistan. [24]
While a few students who were unable to learn via the oralist method were taught with signs, many students preferred to communicate with each other via sign language, sometimes to the frustration of their teachers. The first study of the sign language of these children, which is almost certainly related to modern IPSL, was in 1928 by British teacher H. C. Banerjee. She visited three residential schools for deaf children, at Dacca, Barisal and Calcutta, observing that "in all these schools the teachers have discouraged the growth of the sign language, which in spite of this official disapproval, has grown and flourished." [25] She compared sign vocabularies at the different schools and described the signs in words in an appendix.
A rare case of a public event conducted in sign language was reported by a mission in Palayamkottai in 1906: "Our services for the Deaf are chiefly in the sign language, in which all can join alike, whether learning Tamil, as those do who belong to the Madras Presidency, or English, which is taught to those coming from other parts." [26]
Despite the common assumption that Indo-Pakistani Sign Language is the manual representation of spoken English or Hindi, it is in fact unrelated to either language and has its own grammar. Zeshan (2014) discusses three aspects of IPSL: its lexicon, syntax and spatial grammar. Some distinct features of IPSL that differ from other sign languages include:
man
sibling
brother
woman
sibling
sister
BANK
bank
WHERE
WH
Where is the bank?
SICK
sick
WHO
WH
Who is sick?
Sentences are always predicate final, and all of the signs from the open lexical classes can function as predicates. Ellipsis is extensive, and one-word sentences are common. There is a strong preference for sentences with only one lexical argument. Constituent order does not play any role in the marking of grammatical relations. These are coded exclusively by spatial mechanisms (e.g., directional signs) or inferred from the context. Temporal expressions usually come first in the sentence, and if there is a functional particle, it always follows the predicate (e.g., YESTERDAY FATHER DIE COMPLETIVE – "(My) father died yesterday"). [27]
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language has appeared in numerous Indian films such as:
There has been some significant amount of research on Sign language recognition, but with much less focus for Indo sign language. Due to the political divide, Indian and Pakistani sign languages are generally perceived different, hence leading to fragmented research. There have been a few initiatives that gather open resources for Indian [28] and Pakistani SLs. [29]
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.
Modern Standard Hindi, commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in Devanagari script. It is the official language of India alongside English and the lingua franca of North India. Hindi is considered a Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.
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.
Urdu is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, where it is also an official language alongside English. In India, Urdu is an Eighth Schedule language, the status and cultural heritage of which are recognised by the Constitution of India; and it also has an official status in several Indian states. In Nepal, Urdu is a registered regional dialect and in South Africa it is a protected language in the constitution. It is also spoken as a minority language in Afghanistan and Bangladesh, with no official status.
International Sign (IS) is a pidgin sign language which is used in a variety of different contexts, particularly as an international auxiliary language at meetings such as the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) congress, in some European Union settings, and at some UN conferences, at events such as the Deaflympics, the Miss & Mister Deaf World, and Eurovision, and informally when travelling and socialising.
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. While private correspondence from William Stokoe hinted at a formal name for the language in 1960, the first usage of the term "British Sign Language" in an academic publication was likely by Aaron Cicourel. 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.
Auslan is the sign language used by the majority of the Australian Deaf community. The term Auslan is a portmanteau of "Australian Sign Language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the 1980s, although the language itself is much older. Auslan is related to British Sign Language (BSL) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL); the three have descended from the same parent language, and together comprise the BANZSL language family. Auslan has also been influenced by Irish Sign Language (ISL) and more recently has borrowed signs from American Sign Language (ASL).
Marwari is a language within the Rajasthani language family of the Indo-Aryan languages. Marwari and its closely related varieties like Dhundhari, Shekhawati and Mewari form a part of the broader Marwari language family. It is spoken in the Indian state of Rajasthan, as well as the neighbouring states of Gujarat and Haryana, some adjacent areas in eastern parts of Pakistan, and some migrant communities in Nepal. There are two dozen varieties of Marwari. Marwari is also referred to as simply Rajasthani.
The American Manual Alphabet (AMA) is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language.
Manualism is a method of education of deaf students using sign language within the classroom. Manualism arose in the late 18th century with the advent of free public schools for the deaf in Europe. These teaching methods were brought over to the United States where the first school for the deaf was established in 1817. Today manualism methods are used in conjunction with oralism methods in the majority of American deaf schools.
Manually Coded English (MCE) is an umbrella term referring to a number of invented manual codes intended to visually represent the exact grammar and morphology of spoken English. Different codes of MCE vary in the levels of adherence to spoken English grammar, morphology, and syntax. MCE is typically used in conjunction with direct spoken English.
A contact sign language, or contact sign, is a variety or style of language that arises from contact between deaf individuals using a sign language and hearing individuals using an oral language. Contact languages also arise between different sign languages, although the term pidgin rather than contact sign is used to describe such phenomena.
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.
Argentine Sign Language is used in Argentina. Deaf people attend separate schools, and use local sign languages out of class. A manual alphabet for spelling Spanish has been developed.
Estonian Sign Language is the national sign language of Estonia.
Around seven Tanzanian sign languages were independently developed among deaf students in separate Tanzanian schools for the deaf, starting in 1963. However, the use of several is forbidden by their respective schools. In 1984, a standardized Tanzanian Sign Language was proposed by the Tanzania Association for the Deaf, using common or similar signs where these exist in schools that allowed research. However, it has not been officially implemented, and there remains little influence between the languages. A dictionary has been produced, while still several online resources, e.g. SignWiki, PDFs or YouTube-Videos, are published by different entities. With TSL as with other languages, language standardization comes with some politics and issues of power involved. In 2019, the prime minister, when visiting the national celebrations of the International Week of the Deaf in Iringa, announced another program working on “Harmonization and Standardisation of Tanzanian Sign Language”.
Nepalese Sign Language or Nepali Sign Language (Nepali: नेपाली साङ्केतिक भाषा, romanized: Nēpālī Sāṅkētika Bhāṣā 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 which Nepal has ratified, should give Nepalese Sign Language equal status with the oral languages of the country.
In sign language, an initialized sign is one that is produced with a handshape(s) that corresponds to the fingerspelling of its equivalent in the locally dominant oral language, based on the respective manual alphabet representing that oral language's orthography. The handshape(s) of these signs then represent the initial letter of their written equivalent(s). In some cases, this is due to the local oral language having more than one equivalent to a basic sign. For example, in ASL, the signs for "class" and "family" are the same, except that "class" is signed with a 'C' handshape, and "family" with an 'F' handshape. In other cases initialization is required for disambiguation, though the signs are not semantically related. For example, in ASL, "water" it signed with a 'W' handshape touching the mouth, while "dentist" is similar apart from using a 'D' handshape. In other cases initialization is not used for disambiguation; the ASL sign for "elevator", for example, is an 'E' handshape moving up and down along the upright index finger of the other hand.
Ukrainian Sign Language (USL) (Ukrainian: Українська жестова мова (УЖМ), romanized: Ukrayinska zhestova mova (UZhM)) is the sign language of the deaf community of Ukraine. Ukrainian Sign Language belongs to the family of French sign languages. Worldwide awareness of Ukrainian Sign Language rose sharply in 2014 after the release of a Ukrainian film The Tribe, where actors communicated in Ukrainian Sign Language with no spoken dialogue.
The sociolinguistics of sign languages is the application of sociolinguistic principles to the study of sign languages. The study of sociolinguistics in the American Deaf community did not start until the 1960s. Until recently, the study of sign language and sociolinguistics has existed in two separate domains. Nonetheless, now it is clear that many sociolinguistic aspects do not depend on modality and that the combined examination of sociolinguistics and sign language offers countless opportunities to test and understand sociolinguistic theories. The sociolinguistics of sign languages focuses on the study of the relationship between social variables and linguistic variables and their effect on sign languages. The social variables external from language include age, region, social class, ethnicity, and sex. External factors are social by nature and may correlate with the behavior of the linguistic variable. The choices made of internal linguistic variant forms are systematically constrained by a range of factors at both the linguistic and the social levels. The internal variables are linguistic in nature: a sound, a handshape, and a syntactic structure. What makes the sociolinguistics of sign language different from the sociolinguistics of spoken languages is that sign languages have several variables both internal and external to the language that are unique to the Deaf community. Such variables include the audiological status of a signer's parents, age of acquisition, and educational background. There exist perceptions of socioeconomic status and variation of "grassroots" deaf people and middle-class deaf professionals, but this has not been studied in a systematic way. "The sociolinguistic reality of these perceptions has yet to be explored". Many variations in dialects correspond or reflect the values of particular identities of a community.
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