French Sign Language (french: langue des signes française, LSF) is the
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 ...
of the
deaf
Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an Audiology, audiological condition. In this context it ...
in France and
French-speaking parts of
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
. According to ''
Ethnologue
''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...
'', it has 100,000 native signers.
French Sign Language is related and partially ancestral to
Dutch Sign Language
Dutch Sign Language ( nl, Nederlandse Gebarentaal or NGT; Sign Language of the Netherlands or SLN) is the predominant sign language used by deaf people in the Netherlands.
Although the same spoken Dutch language is used in the Netherlands and ...
(NGT),
Flemish Sign Language
Flemish Sign Language ( nl, Vlaamse Gebarentaal, VGT) is a deaf sign language of Belgium. It is closely related to French Belgian Sign Language, but they are now generally recognized as distinct languages. VGT is estimated to include around 6,0 ...
(VGT),
Belgian-French Sign Language (LSFB),
Irish Sign Language
Irish Sign Language (ISL, ga, Teanga Chomharthaíochta na hÉireann) is the sign language of Ireland, used primarily in the Republic of Ireland. It is also used in Northern Ireland, alongside British Sign Language (BSL). Irish Sign Language is ...
(ISL),
American Sign Language
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 Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
(ASL),
Quebec (also known as French Canadian) Sign Language (LSQ),
Brazilian Sign Language
Brazilian Sign Language ( pt, Língua Brasileira de Sinais ) is the sign language used by deaf communities of urban Brazil. It is also known in short as Libras () and variously abbreviated as LSB, LGB or LSCB (; "Brazilian Cities Sign Language" ...
(LSB, LGB or LSCB) and
Russian Sign Language
Russian Sign Language (RSL) is the sign language used by the Deaf community in Russia and possibly Ukraine, Belarus and Tajikistan. It belongs to the French Sign Language family.
RSL is a natural language with a grammar that differs from spok ...
(RSL).
History
French Sign Language is frequently, though mistakenly, attributed to the work of
Charles Michel de l'Épée
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "f ...
(l'abbé de l'Épée). In fact, he is said to have discovered the already existing language by total accident; having ducked into a nearby house to escape the rain, he fell upon a pair of deaf twin sisters and was struck by the richness and complexity of the language that they used to communicate among themselves and the deaf Parisian community. The
abbé set himself to learning the language, now known as
Old French Sign Language
Old French Sign Language (french: Vieille langue des signes française, often abbreviated as VLSF) was the language of the deaf community in 18th-century Paris at the time of the establishment of the first deaf schools. The earliest records of ...
, and eventually he established a free school for the deaf. At this school, he developed a system he called "methodical signs", to teach his students how to read and write. The abbé was eventually able to make public demonstrations (1771–1774) of his system, demonstrations that attracted educators and celebrities from all over the continent and that popularised the idea that the deaf could be educated, especially by gesture.
The methodical signs he created were a mixture of sign language words he had learned with some grammatical terms he invented. The resulting combination, an artificial language, was over-complicated and completely unusable by his students. For example, where his system would elaborately construct the word "unintelligible" with a chain of five signs ("interior-understand-possible-adjective-not"), the deaf natural language would simply say "understand-impossible". LSF was not invented by the abbé, but his major contributions to the deaf community were to recognize that the deaf did not need oral language to be able to think, and to indirectly accelerate the natural growth of the language by virtue of putting so many deaf students under a single roof.
From this time French Sign Language flourished until the late 19th century when a schism developed between the
manualist and oralist schools of thought. In 1880 the
Milan International Congress of Teachers for the Deaf-Mute convened and decided that the oralist tradition would be preferred. In due time the use of sign language was treated as a barrier to learning to talk and thus forbidden from the classroom.
This situation remained unchanged in France until the late 1970s, when the deaf community began to militate for greater recognition of sign language and for a bilingual education system. In 1991 the National Assembly passed the Fabius law, officially authorising the use of LSF for the education of deaf children. A law was passed in 2005 fully
recognising LSF as a language in its own right.
Alphabet
The
French manual alphabet
The French manual alphabet is an alphabet used for French Sign Language (LSF), both to distinguish LSF words and to sign French words in LSF.
The alphabet has the following letters:
Image:LSF LettreA.jpg, alt=A fist with thumb extended to the ...
is used both to distinguish signs of LSF and to incorporate French words while signing.
See also
*
Old French Sign Language
Old French Sign Language (french: Vieille langue des signes française, often abbreviated as VLSF) was the language of the deaf community in 18th-century Paris at the time of the establishment of the first deaf schools. The earliest records of ...
*
Signed French
Signed French (''français signé'') is any of at least three manually coded forms of French that apply the words (signs) of a national sign language to French word order or grammar. In France, Signed French uses the signs of French Sign Langu ...
*
French Sign Language Academy
The French Sign Language Academy, abbreviated ALSF, is a French association to promote French Sign Language
French Sign Language (french: langue des signes française, LSF) is the sign language of the deaf in France and French-speaking pa ...
*
American Sign Language
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 Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
References
External links
The LSF wikibook
{{Authority control
French Sign Language family
Languages of France
Languages of Switzerland
Languages of French Guiana
Sign languages of France