There are one or two known

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign l ...

s in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

. There are three schools for the deaf in the country: the Mary Chapman School for the Deaf in

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

(est. 1904), the School for the Deaf, Mandalay (est. 1964), and the Immanuel School for the Deaf in

Kalay Kalay ( my, ကလေး), also known as Kale, is a town in the Sagaing Region of Myanmar. It is located upstream from Mandalay and Monywa on the Myittha River, a tributary of the Chindwin River. The town is the district headquarters of the Kalay ...

(est. 2005). At least in Yangon, instruction in oral, in the

Burmese language Burmese ( my, မြန်မာဘာသာ, MLCTS: ''mranmabhasa'', IPA: ) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Myanmar (also known as Burma), where it is an official language, lingua franca, and the native language of the Burmans, the count ...

, with sign used to support it. The sign of Yangon and Mandalay is different, but it's not clear if they are one language or two. Influences on the language(s) include

ASL American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is express ...

in all schools, as well as

Korean Sign Language Korean Sign Language or KSL ( or ) is a sign language used for deaf communities of South Korea under the North-South Korean border. It is often referred to simply as , which means signing in general. KSL is currently one of two official language ...

, Australian Sign Language,

Thai Sign Language Thai Sign Language (TSL), or Modern Standard Thai Sign Language (MSTSL), is the national sign language of Thailand's deaf community and is used in most parts of the country by the 20 percent of the estimated 56,000 pre-linguistically deaf people ...

, and possibly a local substratum. A government project was set up in 2010 to establish a national sign language with the aid of the

Japanese Federation of the Deaf The (JFD) is the national organization of the Deaf in Japan. JFD is also a member organization of the World Federation of the Deaf. The JFD supports Deaf culture in Japan and works to revise laws that prevent the Deaf in Japan from participating ...

. Two manual alphabets are in use in Yangon: the

American manual alphabet The American Manual Alphabet (AMA) is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language. Letters and digits The letters and digits are signed as follows. In informal contexts, the handshapes are not made as distinctly as the ...

, which may or may not be well known, and a Burmese-based alphabet taught in the 1970s and 1980s.Watkins, Justin (2010) "Sign language in Burma: two Burmese finger spelling systems used in Yangon." In ''Burma Studies Conference 2010: Burma in the Era of Globalization'', 6–9 July 2010, Université de Provence, Marseille.

References

{{sign language navigation Languages of Myanmar Sign languages