Saudi Arabian Sign Language
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Saudi Sign Language is the
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
Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
. This sign language is different from the Unified Arabic Sign Language that is used by 18 Arab countries. There are 100,000 deaf people in Saudi Arabia.


Classification

Wittmann (1991) Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 10:1.215–8

/ref> posits that SSL is a language isolate (a 'prototype' sign language), though one developed through
stimulus diffusion In cultural anthropology and cultural geography, cultural diffusion, as conceptualized by Leo Frobenius in his 1897/98 publication ''Der westafrikanische Kulturkreis'', is the spread of cultural items—such as ideas, styles, religions, technol ...
from an existing sign language.


References


Further reading

* Meir, Irit & Sandler, Wendy. (2007) A Language in Space: The Story of Israel Sign Language. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. {{Portal, Saudi Arabia Sign language isolates Languages of Saudi Arabia Arab sign languages