Signed Nepali or Sign-Supported Nepali, is a means of communication often used by (nominally) signing hearing individuals in their interactions with signing deaf, or by deaf persons who for whatever reason acquired Nepali as their mother tongue and then acquired Nepali Sign Language subsequently, or by deaf persons with people with normal hearing whose signing is judged not to be fully fluent (i.e. not Nepali Sign Language).
Nepali, known by the endonym Khas Kura, also known as Gorkhali or Parbatiya, is an Indo-Aryan language of the sub-branch of Eastern Pahari. It is the official language of Nepal and one of the 22 scheduled languages of India. It is spoken mainly in Nepal and by about a quarter of the population in Bhutan. In India, Nepali has official status in the state of Sikkim, and is spoken in Northeast Indian states such as Assam and in West Bengal's Darjeeling district. It is also spoken in Burma and by the Nepali diaspora worldwide. Nepali developed in proximity to a number of Indo-Aryan languages, most notably the other Pahari languages and Maithili, and shows Sanskrit influence. However, owing to Nepal's location, it has also been influenced by Tibeto-Burman languages. Nepali is mainly differentiated from Central Pahari, both in grammar and vocabulary, by Tibeto-Burman idioms owing to close contact with this language group.
Nepalese Sign Language or Nepali Sign Language is the main deaf sign language of Nepal. It is a somewhat standardized language based informally on the variety of Kathmandu, with some input from varieties of Pokhara and elsewhere. As an indigenous sign language, it is not related to oral Nepali. The newly promulgated constitution on Nepal 2072 (2015) had specifically mentioned the right to have education in Sign Language for the deaf. Likewise the newly passed Disability right act 2072 (2017) in its definition of Language has mentioned "“Language” means 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.
Signed Nepali is a pidgin form of Nepali Sign Language commonly used by people with normal hearing who (nominally) sign in their interactions with deaf people. It is also commonly used by those deaf persons who acquired Nepali Sign Language later in life and for whom Nepali is their first language (L1) and Nepali Sign Language is a second language (L2). Although schools for the deaf in Nepal theoretically use Nepali Sign Language as their medium of instruction (alongside written Nepali), in practice and in fact, the majority of classes are conducted in some version of Sign-Supported Nepali, as a Simultaneous Communication (or so-called Total Communication) approach is widely practiced. (Such practices have been documented by Hoffmann-Dilloway (2008). [1] Although the deaf themselves, as articulated by representative organizations such as the National Deaf Federation Nepal and Kathmandu Association of the Deaf, value natural sign language (i.e. Nepali Sign Language) most highly, teachers at schools for the deaf (including sometimes teachers who are themselves deaf) tend to value only signing which follow the grammar of Nepali, i.e. Sign-Supported Nepali. [1]
A pidgin, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside. Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language.
The National Federation of the Deaf Nepal is a non-governmental organization established and run as the umbrella organization for Nepal's various district and local deaf associations. Previously it was known as the National Federation of the Deaf and Hearing (NFDH). It is a member of the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and works as an advocate for deaf rights, as well as running a number of programs throughout the country to improve the lives of Nepal's deaf population.
Kathmandu Association of the Deaf is a non-governmental organization representing the deaf of Kathmandu, and is a member association of the National Federation of the Deaf Nepal. It is the first such association to be established, and in fact the first association of any kind in Nepal established by disabled people themselves and run under their own leadership and management.
Generally speaking, Signed Nepali is neither Nepali nor Nepali Sign Language, but rather a compromise between the two, using the lexicon of the latter (but little or none of its grammar), and the word order (and some, but in practice rarely very much, of the grammar) of the former. As such, it is less than a full language, lacking in both morphology and syntax, and thus generally tends to be not fully comprehensible to the majority of deaf signers. In this, it is similar to other manually coded languages, such as various versions of Signed English.
In linguistics, morphology is the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language. It analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as stems, root words, prefixes, and suffixes. Morphology also looks at parts of speech, intonation and stress, and the ways context can change a word's pronunciation and meaning. Morphology differs from morphological typology, which is the classification of languages based on their use of words, and lexicology, which is the study of words and how they make up a language's vocabulary.
In linguistics, syntax is the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structure of sentences in a given language, usually including word order. The term syntax is also used to refer to the study of such principles and processes. The goal of many syntacticians is to discover the syntactic rules common to all languages.
Manually coded languages are not themselves languages but are representations 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, which have distinct spatial structures, these manual codes (MCL) are the conscious invention of deaf and hearing educators, and mostly follow the grammar of the oral language—or, more precisely, of the written form of the oral language. 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.
