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Sign languages are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulations in combination with non-manual elements. 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.
Auslan is the majority sign language 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).
Ka'apor Sign Language was a village sign language used by the small community of Ka'apor people in the Brazilian state of Maranhão. Linguist Jim Kakumasu observed in 1968 that the number of deaf people in the community was 7 out of a population of about 500. This relatively high ratio of deafness led to both hearing and deaf members of the community using the language, and most hearing children grow up bilingual in the spoken and signed languages. The current state of the language is unknown. Other Indigenous tribes in the region have also been reported to use sign languages, and to communicate between themselves using sign language pidgins.
Kata Kolok, also known as Benkala Sign Language and Balinese Sign Language, is a village sign language which is indigenous to two neighbouring villages in northern Bali, Indonesia. The main village, Bengkala, has had high incidences of deafness for over seven generations. Notwithstanding the biological time depth of the recessive mutation that causes deafness, the first substantial cohort of deaf signers did not occur until five generations ago, and this event marks the emergence of Kata Kolok. The sign language has been acquired by at least five generations of deaf, native signers and features in all aspects of village life, including political, professional, educational, and religious settings.
Ban Khor Sign Language (BKSL) is a village sign language used by at least 400 people of a rice-farming community in the village of Ban Khor in a remote area of Isan. Known locally as pasa kidd, it developed in the 1930s due to a high number of deaf people. Estimated number of users in 2009 was 16 deaf and approximately 400 hearing out of 2741 villagers. It is a language isolate, independent of the other sign languages of Thailand such as Old Bangkok Sign Language and the national Thai Sign Language.
Purari (Namau) is a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea.
Bura Sign Language is a village sign language used by the Bura people around the village of Kukurpu, 40 km south-east of Biu, Nigeria, an area with a high degree of congenital deafness. What little is known about it is due to a brief visit and a videotape by Robert Blench in 2003. It is "likely ... quite independent" from other, better-known sign languages such as Nigerian Sign Language, since none of the signers have been to school and the area where it is used is rather remote.
Sinasina is a term used to refer to for several Chimbu–Wahgi language varieties of Tabare Rural LLG, Simbu Province, Papua New Guinea. The term 'Sinasina' as a language name is an exonym. Speakers of the varieties of this region instead refer to their languages with tok ples vernacular languages endonyms, including: Dinga, Gunangi, Kebai, Kere, Kondo, Nimai, Tabare. The Kere community also has a deaf sign language, Sinasina Sign Language.
Tunisian Sign Language is the sign language used by deaf people in Tunisia. It derives from Italian Sign Language, mixed with indigenous sign.
A village sign language, or village sign, also known as a shared sign language, is a local indigenous sign language used by both deaf and hearing in an area with a high incidence of congenital deafness. Meir et al. define a village sign language as one which "arise[s] in an existing, relatively insular community into which a number of deaf children are born." The term "rural sign language" refers to almost the same concept. In many cases, the sign language is known throughout the community by a large portion of the hearing population. These languages generally include signs derived from gestures used by the hearing population, so that neighboring village sign languages may be lexically similar without being actually related, due to local similarities in cultural gestures which preceded the sign languages. Most village sign languages are endangered due to the spread of formal education for the deaf, which use or generate deaf-community sign languages, such as a national or foreign sign language.
Algerian Jewish Sign Language (AJSL), also known as Ghardaia Sign Language, is a moribund village sign language originally of Ghardaïa, Algeria that is now used in Israel and possibly also in France.
A deaf-community or urban sign language is a sign language that emerges when deaf people who do not have a common language come together and form a community. This may be a formal situation, such as the establishment of a school for the deaf, or informal, such as migration to cities for employment and the subsequent gathering of deaf people for social purposes. An example of the first is Nicaraguan Sign Language, which emerged when deaf children in Nicaragua were brought together for the first time, and received only oral education; of the latter, Bamako Sign Language, which emerged among the tea circles of the uneducated deaf in the capital of Mali. Nicaraguan SL is now a language of instruction and is recognized as the national sign language; Bamako SL is not, and is threatened by the use of American Sign Language in schools for the deaf.
Guinea-Bissau Sign Language is an incipient sign language evolving from the single school for the deaf in Guinea-Bissau, which was founded in Bissau in 2003. In 2005 a linguist and Portuguese Sign Language teacher found GBSL to still be basic, but with some consistency among students in the school and village use when the students went home.
San Juan Quiahije Chatino Sign Language is an emerging village sign language of the indigenous Chatino villages of San Juan Quiahije and Cieneguilla in Oaxaca, Mexico, used by both the deaf and some of the hearing population. It is apparently unrelated to Mexican Sign Language. As of 2014, there is a National Science Foundation-funded study and also a National Institutes of Health-funded study of the development of this language.
Enga Sign Language is an apparent village sign language among the Tato Enga people in Enga province, Papua New Guinea. It was reported in 1980 in three articles by Adam Kendon, based on ethnographic films of three signers in the upper valley of the Lagaip River, but with reports of wider use in the surrounding region. Its current status is unknown, as no more recent information is available.
Papua New Guinean Sign Language (PNGSL) is a sign language originating from Papua New Guinea. The standardised form of PNGSL was made an official language of Papua New Guinea in 2015.
Mehek Sign Language is either home sign or a possible incipient village sign language of the Mehek people of northwestern Papua New Guinea. It is used by at least two deaf people – one in each of two different communities – and their family and friends, but not by the community as a whole. There are reported to be about 100 signers, but statements of numbers this high are not likely to be accurate.
Kailge Sign Language is a well-developed village sign language of Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. It is spoken over a wide region of small hamlets around the town of Kailge, as well as in Kailge itself, in a Ku Waru–speaking region. It might be characterized as a network of homesign rather than as a single coherent language. Its use of signing space is more similar to that of deaf-community sign languages than that of many village sign languages shared with the hearing community.
Sinasian Sign Language (SSSL) is a village sign language of the Sinasina valley in Chimbu Province, Papua New Guinea. This language is used by approximately 3 deaf and 50 hearing individuals, including members of the Kere community. SSSL was first encountered and reported by linguists in 2016. Documentation efforts are ongoing.
Rossel Island Sign Language is a village sign language of Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea reported by Stephen Levinson. He reports that,
