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Sign language

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	Topics Sign language Topic Home A sign language (also signed language) is a languageLanguage A language is a system of s, such as voice sounds, gestures or written symbols that encode or decode information.... which uses manual communicationFacts About Manual communication Manual communication systems use articulation of the hands, gestures, body language and facial expressions in place of the v... , body languageBody language Body language is a broad term for forms of communication using body movements or gestures instead of, or in addition to, sou... and lip patterns instead of soundSound Sound is a disturbance of mechanical energy that propagates through matter as a wave.... to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the handHand The hands are the two intricate, prehensile, multi-fingered body parts normally located at the end of each arm of a human or... s, armArm In anatomy, an arm is one of the upper limbs of a two-legged animal.... s or bodyBody With regard to living things, a body is the integral physical material of an individual, and contrasts with soul, pers... , and facial expressions to express fluidly a speaker's thoughts. Sign languages commonly develop in deaf communities, which can include interpreters and friends and families of deaf people as well as people who are deafDeaf Deaf can refer to:* The physical state of deafness... or hard of hearing themselves. Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign languages develop. In fact, their complex spatial grammars are markedly different from the grammars of spoken languages. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world and are at the cores of local Deaf cultureDeaf culture Deaf community and Deaf culture are two phrases used to refer to persons who are culturally Deaf as opposed to those w... s. Some sign languages have obtained some form of legal recognition, while others have no status at all. In addition to sign languages, various signed codes of spoken languages have been developed, such as Signed English and Warlpiri Sign LanguageWarlpiri Sign Language Warlpiri Sign Language is a sign language used by the Warlpiri, an Aboriginal community in the central desert region of Aust... . These are not to be confused with languages, oral or signed; a signed code of an oral language is simply a signed mode of the language it carries, just as a writing system is a written mode. Signed codes of oral languages can be useful for learning oral languages or for expressing and discussing literal quotations from those languages, but they are generally too awkward and unwieldy for normal discourse. For example, a teacher and deaf student of English in the United States might use Signed English to cite examples of English usage, but the discussion of those examples would be in American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language American Sign Language is the dominant sign language of the Deaf community in the United States, in the English-speaking pa... . Exemplary of the mature status of sign languages is the growing body of sign language poetry, and other stage performances. The available to signing poets are not all available to a speaking poet. This offers new, exciting ways for poems to reach and move the audience. History of sign language The written history of sign language began in the 17th century in Spain. In 1620, Juan Pablo BonetJuan Pablo Bonet Juan Pablo Bonet was a Spanish priest and pioneer of education for the deaf.... published (‘Reduction of letters and art for teaching mute people to speak’) in Madrid. It is considered the first modern treaty of Phonetics and Logopedia, setting out a method of oral education for the deaf people by means of the use of manual signs, in form of a manual alphabet to improve the communication of the dumb or deaf people. From the language of signs of Bonet, Charles-Michel de l'Épée published his alphabet in the 18th century, which has arrived basically unchanged until the present time. In 1755, Abbé de l'Épée founded the first public school for deaf children in Paris; Laurent ClercLaurent Clerc Summary Laurent Clerc was born December 26, 1785 in La Balme les Grottes, department of Isere, France, a village on the northeastern... was arguably its most famous graduate. He went to the United States with Thomas Hopkins GallaudetThomas Hopkins Gallaudet Rev. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, LL.D., was a renowned American pioneer in the education of the deaf.... to found the American School for the DeafAmerican School for the Deaf The American School for the Deaf was the first institution for the education of the deaf in America.... in Hartford, Connecticut. Gallaudet's son, Edward Miner GallaudetEdward Miner Gallaudet Edward Miner Gallaudet, son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, was a famous early educator of the deaf in Washington, DC.... founded the first college for the deaf in 1857, which in 1864 became Gallaudet UniversityGallaudet University name=Gallaudet University\|image=\|motto=Ephphatha... in Washington, DC, the only liberal arts university for the deaf in the world. Generally, each spoken language has a sign language counterpart in as much as each linguistic population will contain Deaf members who will generate a sign language. In much the same way that geographical or cultural forces will isolate populations and lead to the generation of different and distinct spoken languages, the same forces operate on signed languages and so they tend to maintain their identities through time in roughly the same areas of influence as the local spoken languages. This occurs even though sign languages have no relation to the spoken languages of the lands in which they arise. There are notable exceptions to this pattern, however, as some geographic regions sharing a spoken language have multiple, unrelated signed languages. Variations within a 'national' sign language can usually be correlated to the geographic location of residential schools for the deaf. International SignInternational Sign International Sign is an international auxiliary language sometimes used by deaf people at global forums such as the World... , formerly known as Gestuno, is used mainly at international Deaf events such as the DeaflympicsDeaflympics The Deaflympics are an IOC-sanctioned event at which Deaf athletes compete at an elite level.... and meetings of the World Federation of the DeafWorld Federation of the Deaf The World Federation of the Deaf is an international non-governmental organisation that acts as a peak body for national ass... . Recent studies claim that while International Sign is a kind of a pidginPidgin A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of a mixture of o... , they conclude that it is more complex than a typical pidgin and indeed is more like a full signed language. Linguistics of sign In linguistic terms, sign languages are as rich and complex as any oral language, despite the common misconception that they are not "real languages". Professional linguistsLinguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language.... have studied many sign languages and found them to have every linguistic component required to be classed as true languages. Sign languages are not pantomimePantomime Summary In Great Britain, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland pantomime refers to a theatrical genre, usually performed... - in other words, signs are conventional, often arbitrary and do not necessarily have a visual relationship to their referent, much as most spoken language is not onomatopoeic. While iconicityIconicity In functional-cognitive linguistics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between a form of language and its mea... is more systematic and wide-spread in sign languages than in spoken ones, the difference is not categorical. Nor are they a visual rendition of an oral language. They have complex grammarGrammar Grammar is the study of rules governing the use of language.... s of their own, and can be used to discuss any topic, from the simple and concrete to the lofty and abstract. Sign languages, like oral languages, organize elementary, meaningless units into meaningful semantic units. The elements of a sign are Handshape (or Handform), Orientation (or Palm Orientation), Location (or Place of Articulation), Movement, and Non-manual markers (or Facial Expression), summarised in the acronym HOLME. Common linguistic features of deaf sign languages are extensive use of classifiersClassifier (linguistics) A classifier, in linguistics, is a word or morpheme used in some languages in certain contexts to indicate the word class of... , a high degree of inflectionInflection Summary In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification or marking of a word to reflect grammatical information, such ... , and a topic-comment syntaxSyntax In linguistics, Syntax, originating from the Greek words s?? and t???? , is the study of the rules, or "patterned relations... . Many unique linguistic features emerge from sign languages' ability to produce meaning in different parts of the visual field simultaneously. For example, the recipient of a signed message can read meanings carried by the hands, the facial expression and the body posture in the same moment. This is in contrast to oral languages, where the sounds that comprise words are mostly sequential (tone being an exception). Sign languages' relationships with oral languages A common misconception is that sign languages are somehow dependent on oral languages, that is, that they are oral language spelled out in gesture, or that they were invented by hearing people. Hearing teachers in deaf schools, such as Thomas Hopkins GallaudetThomas Hopkins Gallaudet Rev. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, LL.D., was a renowned American pioneer in the education of the deaf.... , are often incorrectly referred to as “inventors” of sign language. Manual alphabets (fingerspelling) are used in sign languages, mostly for proper names and technical or specialised vocabulary borrowed from spoken languages. The use of fingerspelling was once taken as evidence that sign languages were simplified versions of oral languages, but in fact it is merely one tool among many. Fingerspelling can sometimes be a source of new signs, which are called lexicalized signs. On the whole, deaf sign languages are independent of oral languages and follow their own paths of development. For example, British Sign LanguageBritish Sign Language British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of an unkno... and American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language American Sign Language is the dominant sign language of the Deaf community in the United States, in the English-speaking pa... are quite different and mutually unintelligible, even though the hearing people of Britain and America share the same oral language. Similarly, countries which use a single oral language throughout may have two or more sign languages; whereas an area that contains more than one oral language might use only one sign language. South AfricaFacts About South Africa The Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of the African continent.... , which has 11 official oral languages and a similar number of other widely used oral languages is a good example of this. It has only one sign language with two variants due to its history of having two major educational institutions for the deaf which have served different geographic areas of the country. Spatial grammar and simultaneity Sign languages exploit the unique features of the visual medium. Oral language is linear. Only one sound can be made or received at a time. Sign language, on the other hand, is visual; hence a whole scene can be taken in at once. Information can be loaded into several channels and expressed simultaneously. As an illustration, in English one could utter the phrase, "I drove here". To add information about the drive, one would have to make a longer phrase or even add a second, such as, "I drove here along a winding road," or "I drove here. It was a nice drive." However, in American Sign Language, information about the shape of the road or the pleasing nature of the drive can be conveyed simultaneously with the verb 'drive' by inflecting the motion of the hand, or by taking advantage of non-manual signals such as body posture and facial expression, at the same time that the verb 'drive' is being signed. Therefore, whereas in English the phrase "I drove here and it was very pleasant" is longer than "I drove here," in American Sign Language the two may be the same length. In fact, in terms of syntax, ASL shares more with spoken JapaneseJapanese grammar The Japanese language has a highly regular agglutinative verb morphology, with both productive and fixed elements.... than it does with English.(Karen Nakamura,1995) Use of signs in hearing communities GestureGesture A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication made with a part of the body, used instead of or in combination with verba... is a typical component of spoken languages. More elaborate systems of manual communicationManual communication Overview Manual communication systems use articulation of the hands, gestures, body language and facial expressions in place of the v... have developed in places or situations where speech is not practical or permitted, such as cloistered religious communitiesMonastery Overview Monastery, a term derived from the Greek word ??ast????? monasterion, denotes the habitation-and-workplace of a communit... , scuba divingScuba diving Scuba diving is the term used to describe the use of a self-contained breathing set to stay underwater for periods of time g... , television recording studiosTelevision studio A television studio is an installation in which television or video productions take place, either for live television, for ... , loud workplaces, stock exchangeStock exchange A stock exchange, share market or bourse is a corporation or mutual organization which provides facilities for s... s, baseballBaseball Baseball is a team sport popular in North America, parts of Latin America, the Caribbean, and East Asia.... , hunting (by groups such as the Kalahari bushmenBushmen The Bushmen are an indigenous population of the Kalahari Desert, which spans South Africa and neighbouring Botswana and Nami... ), or in the game CharadesFacts About Charades Charades or charade is a word guessing game.... . In Rugby UnionRugby union Rugby union is a variant of rugby football.... the Referee uses a limited but defined set of signs to communicate his/her decisions to the spectators. Recently, there has been a movement to teach and encourage the use of sign language with toddlers before they learn to talk, because such young children can communicate effectively with signed languages well before they are physically capable of speech. This is typically referred to as Baby SignBaby Sign Baby Sign involves using sign language to communicate with infants and toddlers.... . There is also movement to use signed languages more with non-deaf and non-hard-of-hearing children with other causes of speech impairment or delay, for the obvious benefit of effective communication without needless dependence on speech. On occasion, where the prevalence of deaf people is high enough, a deaf sign language has been taken up by an entire local community. Famous examples of this include Martha's Vineyard Sign LanguageMartha's Vineyard Sign Language Martha's Vineyard Sign Language is a sign language, once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Mas... in the USA, Kata KolokKata Kolok Kata Kolok is the name given to a sign language of a village in northern Bali which has had an extraordinarily high rate of ... in a village in BaliBali Bali is an Indonesian island located at , one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, and one of the country's 33 provinces.... , Adamorobe Sign LanguageAdamorobe Sign Language Overview Adamorobe Sign Language is an indigenous sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana.... in GhanaGhana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa.... and Yucatec Maya sign language in MexicoMexico The United Mexican States, generally known as Mexico is a country located in North America, bordered at the north by t... . In such communities deaf people are not socially disadvantaged. Many Australian Aboriginal sign languagesAustralian Aboriginal sign languages Many Australian Aboriginal cultures have or traditionally had a sign language counterpart to their spoken language.... arose in a context of extensive speech taboos, such as during mourning and initiation rites. They are or were especially highly developed among the WarlpiriWarlpiri Sign Language Warlpiri Sign Language is a sign language used by the Warlpiri, an Aboriginal community in the central desert region of Aust... , Warumungu, DieriDieri The Dieri is an Indigenous Australian group and language from the South Australian desert -- specifically Cooper and Leigh C... , KaytetyeFacts About Kaytetye Kaytete is the name of the Indigenous Australians who live around Barrow Creek and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory.... , ArrernteArrernte Arrernte or Arrarnta may refer to:... , Warlmanpa, and are based on their respective spoken languages. A pidginPidgin A pidgin, or contact language, is the name given to any language created, usually spontaneously, out of a mixture of o... sign language arose among tribes of American IndiansNative Americans in the United States American Indian and Alaskan NativesU.S.... in the Great PlainsGreat Plains The Great Plains is the broad expanse of prairie and steppe which lies east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and ... region of North AmericaNorth America North America is a continent in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost fully in the western hemisphere.... (see Plains Indian Sign LanguagePlains Indian Sign Language Plains Indian Sign Language is a sign language formerly used as an interlanguage between Native Americans of the Great Plain... ). It was used to communicate among tribes with different spoken languageLanguage A language is a system of s, such as voice sounds, gestures or written symbols that encode or decode information.... s. There are especially users today among the Crow, CheyenneCheyenne The Cheyenne are a Native American nation of the Great Plains.... , and ArapahoArapaho The Arapaho tribe of Native Americans historically living on the eastern plains of Colorado and Wyoming.... . Unlike other sign languages developed by hearing people, it shares the spatial grammar of deaf sign languages. Home sign Sign systems are sometimes developed within a single family. For instance, when hearing parents with no sign language skills have a deaf child, an informal system of signs will naturally develop, unless repressed by the parents. The term for these mini-languages is home signHome sign Home sign is the gestural communication system developed by a deaf child who lacks input from a language model in the family... (sometimes homesign or kitchen sign). Home sign arises due to the absence of any other way to communicate. Within the span of a single lifetime and without the support or feedback of a community, the child is forced to invent signals to facilitate the meeting of his or her communication needs. Although this kind of system is grossly inadequate for the intellectual development of a child and it comes nowhere near meeting the standards linguists use to describe a complete language, it is a common occurrence. No type of Home Sign is recognized as an official language. Classification of sign languages Although deaf sign languages have emerged naturally in deaf communities alongside or among spoken languages, they are unrelated to spoken languages and have different grammatical structures at their core. A group of sign "languages" known as manually coded languageManually Coded Language Summary Manually Coded Languages are representations of spoken languages in a gestural-visual form; that is, "sign language" version... s are more properly understood as signed modes of spoken languages, and therefore belong to the language families of their respective spoken languages. There are, for example, several such signed encodings of EnglishManually Coded English Manually Coded English is a general term used to describe a variety of visual communication methods expressed through the ha... . There has been very little historical linguistic research on sign languages, and few attempts to determine genetic relationships between sign languages, other than simple comparison of lexical dataFacts About Lexicon A lexicon is usually a list of words together with additional word-specific information, i.e., a dictionary.... and some discussion about whether certain sign languages are dialects of a language or languages of a family. Languages may be spread through migration, through the establishment of deaf schools (often by foreign-trained educators), or due to political domination. Language contactLanguage contact Language contact occurs when speakers of distinct speech varieties interact.... is common, making clear family classifications difficult — it is often unclear whether lexical similarity is due to borrowing or a common parent language. Contact occurs between sign languages, between signed and spoken languages, and between sign languages and gestural systemsGesture Overview A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication made with a part of the body, used instead of or in combination with verba... used by the broader community. One author has speculated that Adamorobe Sign LanguageFacts About Adamorobe Sign Language Adamorobe Sign Language is an indigenous sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana.... may be related to the "gestural trade jargon used in the markets throughout West Africa", in vocabulary and areal features including prosody and phonetics. BSLBritish Sign Language Summary British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of an unkno... , AuslanAuslan Overview Auslan is the sign language of the Australian Deaf community.... and NZSL are usually considered to belong to a language family known as BANZSLBANZSL BANZSL, or British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language, is the language of which British Sign Language, Auslan a... . Japanese Sign LanguageJapanese Sign Language name=Japanese sign language\|nativen\|signers=320,000... , Taiwanese Sign LanguageTaiwanese Sign Language Taiwanese Sign Language is the sign language most commonly used in Taiwan.... and Korean Sign LanguageKorean Sign Language Korean Sign Language is used by deaf Koreans in the Republic of South Korea.... are thought to be members of a Japanese Sign Language family. There are a number of sign languages that emerged from French Sign LanguageFrench Sign Language French Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in the nation of France.... (LSF), or were the result of language contact between local community sign languages and LSF. These include: French Sign LanguageFacts About French Sign Language French Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in the nation of France.... , Quebec Sign LanguageQuebec Sign Language Quebec Sign Language, known in French as Langue des signes qubcoise and typically abbreviated LSQ, is a sign lan... , American Sign LanguageAmerican Sign Language American Sign Language is the dominant sign language of the Deaf community in the United States, in the English-speaking pa... , Irish Sign LanguageIrish Sign Language Irish Sign Language is the sign language of Ireland, used primarily in the Republic of Ireland.... , Russian Sign LanguageRussian Sign Language Russian Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf community in Russia.... , Dutch Sign LanguageDutch Sign Language Dutch Sign Language is the sign language used by deaf people in the Netherlands.... , Flemish Sign LanguageFlemish Sign Language Flemish Sign Language is the language used by signers in Flanders, which is the northern part of Belgium, a country in Weste... , Belgian-French Sign Language, Spanish Sign LanguageSpanish Sign language Spanish Sign language is a language used mainly by Deaf people in Spain and the people who live with them.... , Mexican Sign LanguageMexican Sign Language Mexican Sign Language, is the language of the Deaf community in the urban regions of Mexico.... , Brazilian Sign LanguageBrazilian Sign Language Overview Brazilian Sign Language, also known as "Libras", previously known as LSB or LGB, is the language of the Deaf communities of ... and others. A subset of this group includes languages that have been heavily influenced by American Sign Language (ASL), or are regional varieties of ASL. Bolivian Sign LanguageBolivian Sign Language Bolivian Sign Language is a modified form of American Sign Language used by approximately 400 deaf Bolivians .... is sometimes considered a dialect of ASL. Thai Sign LanguageFacts About Thai Sign Language Thai Sign Language or Modern Standard Thai Sign Language, is the national sign language of Thailand's Deaf community and is ... is a mixed languageMixed language A mixed language is a language that arises when speakers of different languages are in contact and there is a high degree of... derived from ASL and the native sign languages of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and may be considered part of the ASL family. Others possibly influenced by ASL include Ugandan Sign Language, Kenyan Sign LanguageKenyan Sign Language Kenyan Sign Language is the language of the Deaf community in Kenya, used throughout the country by a large number of the co... , Philippine Sign Language and Malaysian Sign LanguageMalaysian Sign Language Malaysian Sign Language, or Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia, is the sign language in every day use in many parts of Malaysia.... . Anecdotal evidence suggests that Finnish Sign LanguageFinnish Sign Language Summary Finnish Sign Language is the sign language most commonly used in Finland.... , Swedish Sign LanguageSwedish Sign Language Swedish Sign Language is the sign language used in Sweden.... and Norwegian Sign LanguageNorwegian Sign Language Norwegian Sign Language is the preferred sign language amongst deaf Norwegians.... belong to a Scandinavian Sign Language family. Icelandic Sign LanguageIcelandic Sign Language The Icelandic sign language, íslenskt táknmál, is the sign language of the deaf community in Iceland.... is known to have originated from Danish Sign Language, although significant differences in vocabulary have developed in the course of a century of separate development. According to a , the sign languages of Russia, Moldova and Ukraine share a high degree of lexical similarity and may be dialects of one language, or distinct related languages. The same report suggested a "cluster" of sign languages centered around Czech Sign Language, Hungarian Sign LanguageHungarian Sign Language Overview Hungarian Sign Language is the sign language of Hungary.... and Slovakian Sign Language. This group may also include Romanian, Bulgarian, and PolishPolish Sign Language Polish Sign Language is the language of the Deaf community in Poland.... sign languages. Known isolates include Nicaraguan Sign LanguageNicaraguan Sign Language Nicaraguan Sign Language is a signed language spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number of schools in western Nic... , Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign LanguageAl-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language The Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language is a sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of a Bedouin communit... , and Providence Island Sign LanguageProvidence Island Sign Language Providence Island Sign Language is the sign language used by the deaf community on the small island community of Providence ... . Sign languages of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Iraq (and possibly Saudi Arabia) may be part of a sprachbundSprachbund Overview A Sprachbund is a group of languages that have become similar in some way because of geographical proximity.... , or may be one dialect of a larger Eastern Arabic Sign Language. Written forms of sign languages Sign language differs from oral language in its relation to writing. The phonemicPhoneme In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones that are cognitively equivalent.... systems of oral languages are primarily sequential: that is, the majority of phonemes are produced in a sequence one after another, although many languages also have non-sequential aspects such as tone. As a consequence, traditional phonemic writing systems are also sequential, with at best diacriticDiacritic Overview A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a word's ... s for non-sequential aspects such as stress and tone. Sign languages have a higher non-sequential component, with many "phonemes" produced simultaneously. For example, signs may involve fingers, hands, and face moving simultaneously, or the two hands moving in different directions. Traditional writing systems are not designed to deal with this level of complexity. Partially because of this, sign languages are not often written. Most deaf signers read and write the oral language of their country. However, there have been several attempts at developing scripts for sign language. These have included both "phonetic" systems, such as (the Hamburg Notational System) and SignWritingSignWriting Sign Writing is a system of writing the movements and handshapes of sign languages.... , which can be used for any sign language, and "phonemic" systems such as the one used by William StokoeWilliam Stokoe Dr. William C. Stokoe, Jr. was a scholar who researched American Sign Language extensively while he worked at Gallaudet Un... in his 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language, which are designed for a specific language. These systems are based on iconic symbolSymbol A symbol, in its basic sense, is a conventional representation of a concept; i.e., an idea, object, quality, quantity, etc.... s. Some, such as SignWriting and HamNoSys, are pictographic, being conventionalized pictures of the hands, face, and body; others, such as the Stokoe notationStokoe notation The Stokoe notation for American sign language was the first writing system designed for a sign language.... , are more iconic. Stokoe used letters of the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals to indicate the handshapes used in fingerspelling, such as 'A' for a closed fist, 'B' for a flat hand, and '5' for a spread hand; but non-alphabetic symbols for location and movement, such as '[]' for the trunk of the body, '×' for contact, and '^' for an upward movement. David J. Peterson has attempted to create a phonetic transcription system for signing that is ASCII-friendly known as the . SignWriting, being pictographic, is able to represent simultaneous elements in a single sign. The Stokoe notation, on the other hand, is sequential, with a conventionalized order of a symbol for the location of the sign, then one for the hand shape, and finally one (or more) for the movement. The orientation of the hand is indicated with an optional diacritic before the hand shape. When two movements occur simultaneously, they are written one atop the other; when sequential, they are written one after the other. Neither the Stokoe nor HamNoSys scripts are designed to represent facial expressions or non-manual movements, both of which SignWriting accommodates easily, although this is being gradually corrected in HamNoSys. Animals that use sign language There have been several notable examples of scientists teaching non-human primates basic signs in order to communicate with humans. Notable examples are:- Chimpanzees: WashoeWashoe (chimpanzee) Washoe is a chimpanzee, currently living at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute at Central Washington Universit... and Loulis Gorillas: MichaelMichael (gorilla) Michael was the first male 'talking' gorilla.... and KokoKoko (gorilla) Koko is the name of a captive, acculturated gorilla trained by Dr.... . Media See also Baby signBaby Sign Baby Sign involves using sign language to communicate with infants and toddlers.... (teaching infants sign language before they have the ability to speak) Body languageBody language Body language is a broad term for forms of communication using body movements or gestures instead of, or in addition to, sou... CherologyCherology Cherology is the equivalent of phonology, but for sign languages.... Chinese number gesturesChinese number gestures Summary Chinese number gestures refers to the Chinese method of using one hand to signify the natural numbers one through ten.... GestureGesture A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication made with a part of the body, used instead of or in combination with verba... Intercultural competenceIntercultural competence Intercultural competence is the ability for successful communication with people of other cultures.... Legal recognition of sign languagesLegal recognition of sign languages The legal recognition of sign languages is one of the major concerns of the international Deaf community.... (status per country/region) List of sign languagesList of sign languages Overview Sign language is not universal. Like spoken languages, sign languages emerge naturally in communities and change through time.... Metacommunicative competenceMetacommunicative competence Metacommunicative competence is the ability to intervene within difficult conversations and to correct communication problem... Nonverbal communicationNonverbal communication Nonverbal communication is usually understood as the process of sending and receiving wordless messages.... Sign language gloveSign language glove A sign language glove is an electronic device which converts the complex motions of a sign language into written or spoken w... Further reading Branson, J., D. Miller, & I G. Marsaja. (1996). "Everyone here speaks sign language, too: a deaf village in Bali, Indonesia." In: C. Lucas (ed.): Multicultural aspects of sociolinguistics in deaf communities. Washington, Gallaudet University Press, pp. 39-5 Emmorey, Karen; & Lane, Harlan L. (Eds.). (2000). The signs of language revisited: An anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-3246-7. Groce, Nora E. (1988). Everyone here spoke sign language: Hereditary deafness on Martha's Vineyard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-27041-X. Kendon, Adam. (1988). Sign Languages of Aboriginal Australia: Cultural, Semiotic and Communicative Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Klima, Edward S.; & Bellugi, Ursula. (1979). The signs of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-80795-2. Krzywkowska, Grazyna (2006). , an article about a dictionary of Hungarian sign language on the internet . Lane, Harlan L. (Ed.). (1984). The Deaf experience: Classics in language and education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-19460-8. Lane, Harlan L. (1984). When the mind hears: A history of the deaf. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-50878-5. Padden, Carol; & Humphries, Tom. (1988). Deaf in America: Voices from a culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-19423-3. Poizner, Howard; Klima, Edward S.; & Bellugi, Ursula. (1987). What the hands reveal about the brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sacks, Oliver W. (1989). Seeing voices: A journey into the land of the deaf. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-06083-0. Sandler, Wendy; & Lillo-Martin, Diane. (2001). Natural sign languages. In M. Aronoff & J. Rees-Miller (Eds.), Handbook of linguistics (pp. 533-562). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 0-631-20497-0. Stiles-Davis, Joan; Kritchevsky, Mark; & Bellugi, Ursula (Eds.). (1988). Spatial cognition: Brain bases and development. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-0046-8; ISBN 0-8058-0078-6. Stokoe, William C. (1960). Sign language structure: An outline of the visual communication systems of the American deaf. Studies in linguistics: Occasional papers (No. 8). Buffalo: Dept. of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Buffalo. External links Note: the articles for specific sign languagesList of sign languages Sign language is not universal. Like spoken languages, sign languages emerge naturally in communities and change through time.... (e.g. ASLAmerican Sign Language American Sign Language is the dominant sign language of the Deaf community in the United States, in the English-speaking pa... or BSLBritish Sign Language British Sign Language is the sign language used in the United Kingdom , and is the first or preferred language of an unkno... ) may contain further external links, e.g. for learning those languages. Films in ASL and other sign languages , directory for all online Sign Languages dictionaries / Multimodal Human Speech and Sign Language Processing for Human-Machine Communication. , by Garrick Mallery from Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg Overview Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and distribute cultural works.... . A first annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded... , 1879–1880 Pablo Bonet, J. de (1620) , (BNE).