Polish Sign Language ("Polski Język Migowy", PJM) is the language of the

Deaf community Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

. Polish Sign Language uses a one-handed manual alphabet of Old French Sign Language and therefore appears to be related to French Sign Language. It may also have common features with Russian and German sign language, which is related to the history of Poland during the partitions, when Russification and Germanization significantly influenced the Polish language, and may also have borrowings from the sign language used in the Austrian partition. Its

lexicon A lexicon is the vocabulary of a language or branch of knowledge (such as nautical or medical). In linguistics, a lexicon is a language's inventory of lexemes. The word ''lexicon'' derives from Greek word (), neuter of () meaning 'of or fo ...

and

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...

are distinct from the

Polish language Polish (Polish: ''język polski'', , ''polszczyzna'' or simply ''polski'', ) is a West Slavic language of the Lechitic group written in the Latin script. It is spoken primarily in Poland and serves as the native language of the Poles. In ad ...

, although there is a manually coded version of Polish known as '' System Językowo-Migowy'' (SJM, or Signed Polish), which is often used by interpreters on television and by teachers in schools. It was first formed/became prevalent around 1817. Around that time, th
Instytut Głuchoniemych
(Institute for the Deaf) was founded by Jakub Falkowski, who began teaching deaf children after meeting a deaf boy by the name of Piotr Gąsowski. In 1879, the first dictionary was published by Józef Hollak and Teofil Jagodziński, titled "Słownik mimiczny dla głuchoniemych i osób z nimi styczność mających". Polish Sign Language uses a distinctive

one-handed 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 ...

based on the alphabet used in Old French Sign Language. In 2012, under the "Sign Language Act", the language received official status in Poland and can be chosen as the language of instruction by those who require it.

References

Scholarly literature

*Fabian, Piotr, and Jarosław Francik. "Synthesis and presentation of the Polish sign language gestures." 1st International Conf. on Applied Mathematics and Informatics at Universities. 2001. *Farris, M. A. Sign language research and Polish sign language. ''Lingua Posnaniensis'' 36 (1994): 13–36. *Oszust, Mariusz, and Marian Wysocki. Polish sign language words recognition with kinect. Human System Interaction (HSI), 2013 The 6th International Conference on. IEEE, 2013.

External links

*
Polish manual alphabet
**(imag
here

official website *
History of Polish Sign Language
Languages of Poland Sign languages {{sign-lang-stub