Providence Island Sign Language (also known as Provisle, "Providencia Sign Language", or PISL) is a

village sign language A village sign language, or village sign, also known as a shared sign language, is a local indigenous sign language used by both deaf and hearing in an area with a high incidence of congenital deafness. Meir ''et al.'' define a village sign languag ...

of the small island community of Providence Island in the Western

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

, off the coast of

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the cou ...

but belonging to

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. The island is about and the total population is about 5000, of which an unusual proportion are deaf (5 in 1,000). It is believed that the sign language emerged in the late 19th or early 20th century. Brief sociological studies have suggested that deaf people on the island are regarded as inferior in mental ability; hearing people do not discuss complex ideas with them, and they hold a marginalized social position. Perhaps consequently, PISL is rather simplistic in comparison to other sign languages. Another possibility for the state of the language is that few deaf people communicate directly, meaning that almost all signing is mediated by the hearing population.

External links

Providence Island Sign Language
by

William Washabaugh William Washabaugh (born January 14, 1945) is Professor Emeritus of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee (UW–Milwaukee, UWM, or Milwaukee) is a public urban research university in Mi ...

(1991)

References

* Woodward, James. ''Attitudes toward deaf people on Providence Island'', Journal article in: Sign Language Studies 7:18 (1978), pp. 49–68 * Woodward, James. ''Sign languages — Providence Island'', in Gallaudet encyclopedia of deaf people and deafness. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987., vol.3, pp. 103–104. * Washabaugh, William; Woodward,James; DeSantis, Susan (1978): "Providence Island Sign: A Context-Dependent Language". In: Anthropological Linguistics, vol. 20, 95–109. {{sign language navigation Sign languages of Colombia Village sign languages