The German Sign Language family is a small
language family
A language family is a group of languages related through descent from a common ''ancestral language'' or ''parental language'', called the proto-language of that family. The term "family" reflects the tree model of language origination in h ...
of
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 ...
s, including
German Sign Language
German Sign Language or Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS), is the sign language of the deaf community in Germany, Luxembourg and in the German-speaking community of Belgium. It is unclear how many use German Sign Language as their main language; Ga ...
,
Polish Sign Language and probably
Israeli Sign Language.
[ Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 10:1.215–8]
/ref> The latter also had influence from Austrian Sign Language
Austrian Sign Language, or ''Österreichische Gebärdensprache'' (ÖGS), is the sign language used by the Austrian Deaf community—approximately 10,000 people (see Krausneker 2006).
Classification
ÖGS and Hungarian Sign Language seem to be ...
, which is unrelated, and the parentage is not entirely clear.
See also
* Swiss German Sign Language
References
{{sign language navigation