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| Indo-Pakistani Sign Language | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Native to | India,Pakistan,Bangladesh | ||
| Signers | 6,000,000 in India (Indian Sign Language, ins), 1,080,000 in Pakistan (Pakistan Sign Language, pks) (2021)[citation needed] | ||
Possibly related toNepalese Sign | |||
| Dialects |
| ||
| Language codes | |||
| ISO 639-3 | Variously:ins – Indian Sign Languagepks – Pakistani Sign Languagewbs – West Bengal Sign Language | ||
| Glottolog | indo1332 Indo-Pakistani Sign | ||
Area of use by country. Native Countries Partial Users Non-native users on large scale | |||
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (IPSL) is the predominantsign language inthe subcontinent of South Asia, used by at least 15 milliondeaf signers.[1][2] As with many sign languages, it is difficult to estimate numbers with any certainty, as theCensus of India does not list sign languages and most studies have focused on the north and urban areas.[3][4] As of 2024, it is the most used sign language in the world, andEthnologue ranks it as the 149th most spoken language in the world.[5]
Some scholars regard varieties in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and possibly Nepal as variants of Indo-Pakistani Sign Language. Others recognize some varieties as separate languages.[clarification needed] TheISO standard currently distinguishes:
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Deaf schools inSouth Asia are overwhelminglyoralist in their approach.[9]UnlikeAmerican Sign Language (ASL) and sign languages of European countries, IPSL does not have much official government support. The deaf communities of the Indian subcontinent are still struggling for IPSL to gain the status of sign language as a minority language. Though sign language is used by many deaf people in the subcontinent, it is not used officially in schools for teaching purposes.
In 2005, the National Curricular Framework (NCF) gave some degree of legitimacy to sign language education, by hinting that sign languages may qualify as an optional third language choice for hearing students.NCERT in March 2006 published a chapter on sign language in a class III textbook, emphasising the fact that it is a language like any other and is "yet another mode of communication." The aim was to create healthy attitudes towards thedisabled.[citation needed]
Strenuous efforts have been made byDeaf communities, NGO's, researchers and other organisations working for people with hearing disabilities, including the All India Federation of Deaf (AIFD), National association of the Deaf (NAD) in the direction of encouraging ISL. Until 2001, no formal classes for teaching ISL were conducted in India. During this period, Ali Yavar Jung National Institute of Hearing and the Handicapped (AYJNIHH), Mumbai, established an ISL cell. It started a course called "Diploma in India Sign Language Interpreter Course". The curriculum designed for the course aims to develop professional communication in Sign language and ability to interpret professionally. It also focused on the basic understanding of theDeaf community andDeaf culture. Later, the course was offered in the regional centers, in Hyderabad, Bhuvaneshwar, Kolkata and Delhi.[citation needed]
Besides AYJNIHH, organisations like the Mook Badhir Sangathan inIndore and several other organisations offer ISL classes. Many NGOs all over the India use ISL to teach English and various academic and vocational courses. These NGOs include ISHARA (Mumbai), Deaf Way Foundation (Delhi), the Noida Deaf Society and Leadership Education Empowerment of the Deaf (LEED) (Pune), Speaking Hands Institute for the Deaf (Punjab), etc. (Randhawa, 2014). The associations like the Association of Sign Language Interpreters (ASLI) and the Indian Sign Language Interpreters Association (ISLIA) were established in 2006 and 2008 respectively for the professional development ofInterpreters in India. Two schools have been established in India which followbilingual approach to teach deaf students. The schools are theBajaj Institute of Learning (BIL) in Dehradun andMook Badhir Sangathan in Indore. Apart from the establishment of organisations working for Deaf people there has been a spurt in research on sign language in India. Recent research developments include the studies by research scholars of theJawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and theUniversity of Delhi including Wallang, 2007; Sinha, 2003, 2008/2013; Hidam, 2010; Kulsheshtra, 2013. There is also work on problems and awareness of IPSL and typology of IPSL verbs (Morgan 2009,2010). Apart from these there have been continued works by scholars on linguistic aspects of IPSL as well as on varieties of IPSL (Bhattacharya and Hidam 2010, Aboh, Pfau, and Zeshan 2005, Zeshan and Panda 2011, Panda 2011, Panda 2012). Steps taken by the Government of India to promote sign language include the establishment of theISLRTC. However, currently the autonomy of the Research centre is a contentious issue, which is yet to be resolved.[citation needed]
Pakistan has a deaf population of 0.24 million, which is approximately 7.4% of the overall disabled population in the country.[10]
There are manyvarieties of sign language in the region, including many pockets ofhome sign and local sign languages, such asGhandruk Sign Language,Jhankot Sign Language, andJumla Sign Language in Nepal, andAlipur Sign Language in India, which appear to belanguage isolates. There are also variousSri Lankan sign languages which may not even be related to each other. However, the urban varieties of India, Pakistan, Nepal (Nepalese Sign Language), and Bangladesh are clearly related (although, forNepalese Sign Language at least, it is not clear whether the relation is genetic, or perhaps rather one of borrowing compounded by extensive incorporation of a shared South Asian gestural base). There is disagreement whether these related varieties should be considered separate languages.
While the sign system in IPSL appears to be largely indigenous, elements in IPSL are derived fromBritish Sign Language. For example, most IPSL signers nowadays usefingerspelling based onBritish Sign Languagefingerspelling, with only isolated groups using an indigenousDevanagari-basedfingerspelling system (for example, Deaf students and graduates of the school for the deaf inVadodara/Baroda,Gujarat). In addition, more recently contact with foreign Deaf has resulted in rather extensive borrowing from International Signs and (either directly or via International Signs) fromAmerican Sign Language. A small number of the Deaf in and aroundBengaluru are often said to useAmerican Sign Language (owing to a longstanding ASL deaf school there); however it is probably more correct to say that they use a lexicon based largely on ASL (orSigned English), while incorporating also a not inconsequential IPSL element. Furthermore, regardless of the individual signs used, the grammar used is clearly IPSL and not ASL.[citation needed]
The Delhi Association for the Deaf is reportedly working withJawaharlal Nehru University to identify a standard sign language for India.[15]
Although discussion of sign languages and the lives of deaf people is extremely rare in the history of South Asian literature, there are a few references to deaf people and gestural communication in texts dating from antiquity.[16] Symbolic hand gestures known asmudras have been employed in religious contexts inHinduism,Buddhism andZoroastrianism for many centuries, althoughBuddhism have often excluded deaf people from participation in a ritual or religious membership.[17] In addition,classical Indian dance andtheatre often employs stylised hand gestures with particular meanings.[18]
An early reference to gestures used by deaf people for communication appears in a 12th-century Islamic legal commentary, theHidayah. In the influential text, deaf (or "dumb") people have legal standing in areas such asbequests, marriage, divorce and financial transactions, if they communicate habitually with intelligible signs.[19]
Early in the 20th century, a high incidence of deafness was observed among communities of theNaga hills. As has happened elsewhere in such circumstances (see, for example,Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language), avillage sign language had emerged and was used by both deaf and hearing members of the community. Ethnologist and political officerJohn Henry Hutton wrote:
As one might expect ... of men without the art of writing, the language of signs has reached a high state of development... To judge how highly developed is this power of communicating by signs, etc., it is necessary only to experience a Naga interpreter's translation of a story or a request told to him in sign language by a dumb man. ... Indeed the writer has known a dumb man make a long and detailed complaint of an assault in which nothing was missing except proper names, and even these were eventually identified by means of the dumb man's description of his assailants' dress and personal appearance.[20]
(SeeNaga Sign Language.)However, it is unlikely that any of these sign systems are related to modern IPSL, and deaf people were largely treated as social outcasts throughout South Asian history.
Documented deaf education began with welfare services, mission schools andorphanages from the 1830s, and "initially worked with locally-devised gestural or signed communication, sometimes withsimultaneous speech."[21] Later in the 19th century, residential deaf schools were established, and they tended (increasingly) to adopt anoralist approach over the use of sign language in the classroom. These schools included The Bombay Institution for Deaf-Mutes, which was founded by BishopLeo Meurin in the 1880s,[22] and schools inMadras[23] andCalcutta[24] which opened in the 1890s. Other residential schools soon followed, such as the "School for Deaf and Dumb Boys" at Mysore, founded in 1902,[25] a school inDehiwala in what is nowSri Lanka, founded in 1913,[26] and "The Ida Rieu School for blind, deaf, dumb and other defective children", founded in 1923 inKarachi, in what is nowPakistan.[27]
While a few students who were unable to learn via the oralist method were taught with signs, many students preferred to communicate with each other via sign language, sometimes to the frustration of their teachers. The first study of the sign language of these children, which is almost certainly related to modern IPSL, was in 1928 by British teacher H. C. Banerjee. She visited three residential schools for deaf children, atDacca,Barisal and Calcutta, observing that "in all these schools the teachers have discouraged the growth of the sign language, which in spite of this official disapproval, has grown and flourished."[28] She compared sign vocabularies at the different schools and described the signs in words in an appendix.
A rare case of a public event conducted in sign language was reported by a mission inPalayamkottai in 1906: "Our services for the Deaf are chiefly in the sign language, in which all can join alike, whether learningTamil, as those do who belong to theMadras Presidency, or English, which is taught to those coming from other parts."[29]
Despite the common assumption that Indo-Pakistani Sign Language is the manual representation of spoken English or Hindi, it is in fact unrelated to either language and has its own grammar.Zeshan (2014) discusses three aspects of IPSL: its lexicon, syntax and spatial grammar. Some distinct features of IPSL that differ from other sign languages include:
man
sibling
man sibling
brother
woman
sibling
woman sibling
sister
Sentences are alwayspredicate final, and all of the signs from the open lexical classes can function as predicates. Ellipsis is extensive, and one-word sentences are common. There is a strong preference for sentences with only one lexical argument. Constituent order does not play any role in the marking of grammatical relations. These are coded exclusively by spatial mechanisms (e.g., directional signs) or inferred from the context. Temporal expressions usually come first in the sentence, and if there is a functional particle, it always follows the predicate (e.g., YESTERDAY FATHER DIE COMPLETIVE – "(My) father died yesterday").[30]
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language has appeared in numerous Indian films such as:
There has been some significant amount of research onSign language recognition, but with much less focus for Indo sign language. Due to the political divide, Indian and Pakistani sign languages are generally perceived different, hence leading to fragmented research. There have been a few initiatives that gather open resources for Indian[31] and Pakistani SLs.[32]
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.| Official language | |
|---|---|
| Indo-European | |
| Sino-Tibetan | |
| Austroasiatic | |
| Dravidian | |
| Afro-Asiatic | |
| Sign | |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
