List Of Sign Languages
There are perhaps around two hundred sign languages in use around the world today. The number is not known with any confidence; new sign languages emerge frequently through creolization and de novo (and occasionally through language planning). In some countries, such as Sri Lanka and Tanzania, each school for the deaf may have a separate language, known only to its students and sometimes denied by the school; on the other hand, countries may share sign languages, though sometimes under different names (Croatian and Serbian, Indian and Pakistani). Deaf sign languages also arise outside of educational institutions, especially in village communities with high levels of congenital deafness, but there are significant sign languages developed for the hearing as well, such as the speech-taboo languages used in aboriginal Australia. Sign language scholars are doing field surveys to identify, differentiate, and map the admittedly fuzzy boundaries of sign languages.
The following list is grouped into three sections:
- Deaf sign languages, which are the preferred languages of Deaf communities around the world; these include village sign languages, shared with the hearing community, and Deaf-community sign languages
- Signed modes of oral languages, also known as manually coded languages, which are a bridge between the deaf and oral languages
- Auxiliary sign systems, which are not native languages, but are signed systems of varying complexity used in addition to oral languages. Simple gestures are not included, as they do not constitute language.
The list is sorted alphabetically and regionally, and such groupings should not be taken to imply any genetic relationships between the languages (see List of language families).
Read more about List Of Sign Languages: Deaf Sign Languages, Auxiliary Sign Systems, Signed Modes of Oral Languages
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