Finnish Sign Language () 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 ...
most commonly used in
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
. There are 3,000 ''(2012 estimate)'' Finnish
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 ...
who have Finnish Sign Language as a first language. As the Finnish system records users by their
written language
A written language is the representation of a spoken or gestural language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will pick up spoken language or sign language by exposure even i ...
, not their
spoken alone, nearly all deaf people who sign are assigned this way and may be subsumed into the overall Finnish language figures. Historically the aim was
oralism
Oralism is the education of deaf students through oral language by using lip reading, speech, and mimicking the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech.Through Deaf Eyes. Diane Garey, Lawrence R. Hott. DVD, PBS (Direct), 2007. Oralism ca ...
, whereby deaf people were taught to speak oral Finnish, even if they could not hear it; thus older people are recorded under these figures. In 2014, only 500 people registered Finnish Sign Language as their first language. There are several sign languages that come under this label; FSL for those that can see; Signed Finnish, which does not follow the same
grammatical rules, and a version for those who are
blind and deaf. Thus, there are around 8,000 people that use a Finnish Sign Language linguistically. Many estimates say 5,000, but these are exaggerations derived from the 14,000 deaf people in Finland (many of whom do not speak Finnish Sign Language). Finnish Sign Language is derived from
Swedish Sign Language
Swedish Sign Language (SSL; ) is the sign language used in Sweden. It is recognized by the Swedish government as the country's official sign language, and hearing parents of deaf individuals are entitled to access state-sponsored classes that f ...
, which is a different language from Finnish Swedish Sign Language (which is
Swedish Finnish language derived from Finnish Sign Language, of which there are an estimated 90 speakers in Finland), from which it began to separate as an independent language in the middle of the 19th century.
Finnish legislation
recognized Finnish Sign Language as one of Finland's domestic languages in 1995 when it was included in the renewed
constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of Legal entity, entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed.
When ...
. Finland then became the third country in the world to recognize a sign language as a
natural language
In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...
and the right to use it as a
mother tongue
A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...
.
Courses in "sign language" have been taught in Finland since the 1960s. At that time, instruction taught signs but followed Finnish
word order
In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...
(see
Manually Coded Language
Manually coded languages (MCLs) are a family of gestural communication methods which include gestural spelling as well as constructed languages which directly interpolate the grammar and syntax of oral languages in a gestural-visual form—that ...
). Later, as research on sign languages in general and Finnish Sign Language in particular determined that sign languages tend to have a very different grammar from oral languages, the teaching of Finnish Sign Language and
Signed Finnish
Signing may refer to:
* Using sign language
* Signature, placing one's name on a document
* Signature (disambiguation)
A signature is a hand-written, possibly stylized, version of someone's name, which may be used to confirm the person's identi ...
diverged.
See also
*
Carl Oscar Malm, founder of Finnish Sign Language
References
Relevant literature
*Kanto, Laura, Henna Syrjälä, and Wolfgang Mann. "Assessing vocabulary in deaf and hearing children using Finnish Sign Language." ''The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education'' 26, no. 1 (2021): 147–158.
*Takkinen, Ritva. "10. The Acquisition of Finnish Sign Language." In ''Research in Logopedics'', pp. 175–205. Multilingual Matters, 2008.
External links
Finnish Sign Language dictionary (in Finnish)Draft Curriculum and Structure of Finnish Sign Language(PDF download, in English) – contains useful information on the grammar of Finnish Sign Language
Finnish Manual AlphabetReport on Finnish Languages 2017
{{sign language navigation
Swedish Sign Language family
Sign languages in Finland
Languages of Finland