#ban khor sign language

[allthingslinguistic]

British Sign Language is one of 11 indigenous languages in the UK. The use of signed communication in the UK can be traced back at least to the 17th century. The parish record of St Martin’s Parish in Leicestershire mentions that in 1575 Thomas Tillsye, who was deaf, used signs “for the expression of his minde instead of words” during his wedding ceremony. In his account of the great fire of London in 1666, the famed diarist Samuel Pepys mentions one of Sir George Downing’s informants, a deaf boy, who recounted news about the fire using signs: “And he made strange signs of the fire … and many things they understood, but I could not.” Sign languages evolve naturally when a community has enough deaf members. Sometimes this happens because of a high incidence of deafness in a certain region, as in the case of Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (now extinct) in the US, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language in Israel, Ban Khor Sign Language in Thailand, Yucatec Mayan Sign Language in Mexico, and Kata Kolok in Indonesia. These are examples of village sign languages, and they can teach us a lot about inclusion: deaf community members are well integrated into the community because everyone, deaf and hearing, uses the sign language. Other sign languages have emerged when deaf children get together in educational settings, such as residential schools. For example, when deaf children from all parts of Nicaragua first came together at schools for the deaf in the early 1980s, attempts to teach them Spanish failed. Instead, they created a new sign language, now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Sign languages are fully-fledged, natural languages with their own dialects – they need protecting

[kenyatta]

From Ban Khor, a sign language in Thailand, to Adamorobe in Ghana, linguists have described about two dozen such languages and suspect that many more exist. There are various names for them. Some researchers call them ‘young’ or ‘emerging’ languages, especially when the focus is on how they’re evolving. Others call them ‘village’ or ‘micro’ sign languages, which reflects the size and isolation of the communities where they spring up. A less frequent but no less apt term is ‘shared’ sign languages, because they’re often used by deaf and hearing people alike.

They tend to arise in geographically or culturally isolated communities with an unusually high prevalence of deafness, often because of marriages between cousins. In such places, formal education isn’t commonly available and there’s no access to the national sign language, so over years or decades people have invented signs and ways to combine those signs.

Used by so few people, these fragile languages are endangered as soon as they appear. Someone else more rich and powerful is always eager to get rid of them or tell the signers to use some other language instead. Sometimes those powerful forces are deaf associations that look down on all things rural and remote.

And because the signers don’t always agree which signs mean what or how to use them, these languages can seem wobbly and half-baked. They’re undoubtedly languages in their own right, however, given that signers have used them their whole lives for everyday communication.

Studies of these languages have already revolutionised what was thought about sign languages. For instance, it was assumed that all sign languages, big or small, use the space around the body to represent time in the same way. The past is located behind the signer’s body, the present right in front and the future further in front. But village sign languages often do things differently: Kata Kolok, for example, doesn’t have a timeline at all.

[principleofplenitude]

From Ban Khor, a sign language in Thailand, to Adamorobe in Ghana, linguists have described about two dozen such languages and suspect that many more exist. There are various names for them. Some researchers call them ‘young’ or ‘emerging’ languages, especially when the focus is on how they’re evolving. Others call them ‘village’ or ‘micro’ sign languages, which reflects the size and isolation of the communities where they spring up. A less frequent but no less apt term is ‘shared’ sign languages, because they’re often used by deaf and hearing people alike. They tend to arise in geographically or culturally isolated communities with an unusually high prevalence of deafness, often because of marriages between cousins. In such places, formal education isn’t commonly available and there’s no access to the national sign language, so over years or decades people have invented signs and ways to combine those signs. Used by so few people, these fragile languages are endangered as soon as they appear. Someone else more rich and powerful is always eager to get rid of them or tell the signers to use some other language instead. Sometimes those powerful forces are deaf associations that look down on all things rural and remote. And because the signers don’t always agree which signs mean what or how to use them, these languages can seem wobbly and half-baked. They’re undoubtedly languages in their own right, however, given that signers have used them their whole lives for everyday communication. Studies of these languages have already revolutionised what was thought about sign languages. For instance, it was assumed that all sign languages, big or small, use the space around the body to represent time in the same way. The past is located behind the signer’s body, the present right in front and the future further in front. But village sign languages often do things differently: Kata Kolok, for example, doesn’t have a timeline at all. Studying village sign languages clearly reveals much about how sign languages are unique. But because most of these village sign languages appear to be only 30 to 40 years old, enough for three generations’ worth of evolution, they also raise the extraordinary opportunity to witness the birth of a language in real time. Researchers can follow how linguistic structures like word order emerge and change from the first generation to those that follow. Are these changes innate to our human linguistic abilities or do they come from somewhere else? The opportunity to answer such questions has sparked interest in village sign languages among linguists, and the allure of ‘discovering’ a new language can be hard to resist. Given the high stakes, and the potential to exert unwanted influence on these fragile languages, researchers have been arguing for years about how to handle them.

“Studying an emerging sign language won’t kill it – so what are linguists scared of?“ from Mosaic Science

[zodiacpostgenerator]

The signs as Village sign languages:

Aries: Adamorobe Sign Language

Taurus: Enga Sign Language

Gemini: Jumla Sign Language

Cancer: Mayan Sign Language

Leo: Hawai'i Sign Language

Virgo: Kata Kolok

Libra: Alipur Sign Language

Scorpio: Angami Naga Sign Language

Sagittarius: Village sign language

Capricorn: Martha's Vineyard Sign Language

Aquarius: Keresan Sign Language

Pisces: Ban Khor Sign Language