Hong Kong Sign Language (香港手語), or HKSL, is the deaf sign language of
Hong Kong
Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...
and
Macau
Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
. It derived from the southern dialect of
Chinese Sign Language
Chinese Sign Language (abbreviated CSL or ZGS; ) is the official sign language of the People's Republic of China. It is unrelated to Taiwanese Sign Language and is known in the Republic of China as ''Wénfǎ Shǒuyǔ'' ().
History
The first D ...
, but is now an independent, mutually unintelligible language.
Origins
The origin of HKSL can be traced back to around 1949, when a group of around 20 deaf people moved from Shanghai and Nanjing to Hong Kong and began tutoring the local deaf community to facilitate greater social cohesion and standardisation of their sign language(s). Chinese sign language was the initial medium of instruction, leading to the circulation of CSL among the local deaf community, who adapted the language by developing their own signs with new ideas, concepts or things they encounter in their lives. This led to a further development of the vocabulary and intricacies of Hong Kong Sign Language as separate from CSL.
For a number of years, HKSL continued to develop with little external influence, as international travel from Hong Kong and thus interaction between other deaf communities was not always feasible.
With more and more Hong Kong deaf people travelling abroad in recent decades for a variety of reasons, borrowings into HKSL have become more common. 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 ...
was borrowed and adopted (with some adaptations) in this way, as were many other signs.
Grammar and vocabulary
There are 40 to 50 basic hand-shapes in Hong Kong sign language. Signs are generally derived from conceptual representation (abstract, such as the signs for 'father' and 'mother'), visual representation (direct, such as the signs for 'to separate' and 'thick-skinned') or representation of the
Chinese character
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the Written Chinese, writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are k ...
(such as with the signs for 'to introduce' and 'the Chinese language') or - rarely - the
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
term (such as with the sign for 'toilet/WC'). Question words are generally phrase or sentence-final, while the basic
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 ...
is S-O-V. It is worth noting that the subject and object may be omitted in conversation between two people where they are clear from context.
Sometimes, signers may speak or mouth the word while signing. For example, when signing the name of a place like
Central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...
, the signer may mouth the Cantonese name for "Central" while signing. This practice may be related to the signers' past training in speech and lip-reading, but sometimes mouthing bears no relation to the spoken language, and is an inherent part of the sign.
HKSL is interesting among sign languages in that it is entirely ambidextrous.
References
External links
Chinese Sign Language: by Elizabeth T. Yeh, 10/28/04Centre for Sign Linguistics and Deaf Studies, Chinese University of Hong KongHong Kong Sign Language BrowserHong Kong Sign Language AssociationHong Kong Society for the DeafSilenceThen & Now: Sign Language in Hong Kong by Jason WordieSign Bilingualism and Deaf Education in Hong KongELAR archive of Preliminary Documentation of Macau Sign Language
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Sign languages of China
Languages of Hong Kong
Languages of Macau