Nanabin Sign Language is a
family sign language of the coastal
Fante village of
Ekumfi Nanabin in the
Central Region of
Ghana
Ghana (; tw, Gaana, ee, Gana), officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It abuts the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing borders with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and To ...
, ca. 8 km east of
Mankessim
Mankessim is a town in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. It is approximately 75 km west of Accra, on the main road to Sekondi-Takoradi. It is the traditional headquarters of the Fante ethnic group of Ghana. Mankessim's history is ...
. It is used by three generations of a single family which is mostly deaf. The second generation are bilingual in
Ghanaian Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) developed in the United States and Canada, but has spread around the world. Local varieties have developed in many countries, but there is little research on which should be considered dialects of ASL (such as Bolivia ...
.
Nanabin SL is similar to
Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language or Adasl is a village sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana. It is used by about 30 deaf and 1370 hearing people (2003).
The Adamorobe community is notable for its unusually high incidence of ...
in certain conventionalized signs deriving from Akan hearing culture. Both use lax handshapes and portray events from the perspective of the character rather than of the observer.
References
*Brentari, ed, ''Sign Languages'', CUP, 2010
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Village sign languages
Sign languages of Ghana