Venezuelan Sign Language
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Venezuelan Sign language or VSL (''Lengua de señas venezolana'' or ''LSV'') is the national
deaf 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
Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
. The term, "Venezuelan Sign Language," began to be used in the 1930s. It is widely used, and Venezuela has a national bilingual education program for VSL and Spanish, though the language used by adults differs from that of the classroom. There is a large VSL dictionary published by the ''Federación Venezolana de Sordos''. VSL has been used in schools since 1937.


Origin

The first known references to a Deaf community which used a sign language in Venezuela date from the 1930s. In 1935 the first school for children who are deaf or hard of hearing, the ''Instituto Venezolano de Ciegos y Sordomudos'' (Venezuelan Blind and Deaf Institute), was founded in
Caracas Caracas (, ), officially Santiago de León de Caracas, abbreviated as CCS, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela, and the center of the Metropolitan Region of Caracas (or Greater Caracas). Caracas is located along the Guaire River in the ...
. That school served as the cradle for a small community of signers, who created a sign language out of many signs which the children had used at home. A few years later the administration of the institute decided to separate the instruction of blind and deaf students and created the ''Escuela Taller de Sordomudos'' (Workshop School for the Prelingually Deaf). This school hired hearing teachers trained in
Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...
, who knew
Spanish Sign language Spanish Sign Language ( es, Lengua de Signos Española, LSE) is a sign language used mainly by deaf people in Spain and the people who live with them. Although there are not many reliable statistics, it is estimated that there are over 100,000 s ...
. The mingling of the system developed by the students and the language used by the teachers seems to be the origin of what is today VSL. In 1950, the first generation of alumni of the schools founded the ''Asociación de Sordomudos de Caracas'' (Deaf Association of Caracas), under the direction of José Arquero Urbano, an immigrant who had been a leader of the Deaf community in
Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
. The influence of the signs brought by Arquero further transformed VSL, according to recollections collected from people involved in that period of the Association. Because of this many Venezuelan Deaf people assume that Arquero was the creator of VSL.


Legal status

In 1999 after intensive lobbying by the Deaf associations of Venezuela, the
constituent assembly A constituent assembly (also known as a constitutional convention, constitutional congress, or constitutional assembly) is a body assembled for the purpose of drafting or revising a constitution. Members of a constituent assembly may be elected b ...
included two references to LSV in the current constitution of Venezuela. Article 81 recognizes the right of Deaf people to communicate through LSV and Article 101 establishes that Deaf people have the right to be informed in their language through public and private television. LSV, nevertheless, retains a lower legal status than the language officially recognized by the constitution. Article 9 grants the status of an "
official language An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...
" to
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
(throughout the nation) and to
native Native may refer to: People * Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Native Americans (disambiguation) In arts and entert ...
languages (in the ancestral territories). LSV does not receive such recognition. The constitution only recognizes the right to use LSV.


LSV studies

Studies on LSV indicate that the language has the same structural elements described in other sign languages, such as, the use of directional signs, the use of signs with classifiers, changes in the form of the sign to indicate mood and
aspect Aspect or Aspects may refer to: Entertainment * ''Aspect magazine'', a biannual DVD magazine showcasing new media art * Aspect Co., a Japanese video game company * Aspects (band), a hip hop group from Bristol, England * ''Aspects'' (Benny Carter ...
, and a strong pragmatical dependence in defining
argument An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
roles. In addition, as a result of studies on the grammar of LSV, there has also been research into the
psycholinguistics Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the interrelation between linguistic factors and psychological aspects. The discipline is mainly concerned with the mechanisms by which language is processed and represented in the mind ...
,
sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural Norm (sociology), norms, expectations, and context (language use), context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on languag ...
and
ethnolinguistics Ethnolinguistics (sometimes called cultural linguistics) is an area of anthropological linguistics that studies the relationship between a language and the nonlinguistic cultural behavior of the people who speak that language. __NOTOC__ Examples ...
of the Deaf community in the country.


Number of LSV users

Included among the users of LSV are both the Deaf who use the language as their principal means of communication and hearing people who have a range of fluency in LSV. The number of users is unknown. There are 1.2 million deaf in Venezuela, but most lost their hearing late in life. There were over 3000 deaf children in the national public school system in 2004, and around 9000 members of Deaf associations; with around 0.2% of children typically born deaf, there are an estimated congenitally 15,000 deaf people in Venezuela. However, it is not known how many of them speak VSL.


References


External links


Vocabulary list in VSL (in Spanish)
{{sign language navigation Sign language isolates Languages of Venezuela