Danish Sign Language (, DTS) is the
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 elements, no ...
used in
Denmark
Denmark is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropole and most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark,, . also known as the Danish Realm, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the Autonomous a ...
.
Classification
Henri Wittmann (1991)
assigned DSL to the
French Sign Language family
The French Sign Language (LSF, from ) or Francosign family is a language family of sign languages which includes French Sign Language and American Sign Language.
The LSF family descends from Old French Sign Language (VLSF), which developed among ...
because of similarities in vocabulary.
Peter Atke Castberg studied deaf education in Europe for two years (1803–1805), including at
l'Épée's
school in Paris, and founded the first deaf school in Denmark in 1807, where Danish Sign Language (DTS) developed.
The exact relationship between DTS and
Old French Sign Language (VLSF) is not known; Castberg was critical of l'Épée's 'methodical signs' and also receptive to local sign language in 1807, and may thus have introduced signs from VLSF to a pre-existing local language (or
home sign
Home sign (or kitchen sign) is a gestural communication system, often invented spontaneously by a Deafness, deaf child who lacks accessible linguistic input. Home sign systems often arise in families where a deaf child is raised by hearing parent ...
(s)) rather than derived DTS from VLSF itself.
[ In any case, Castberg introduced a one-handed manual alphabet in 1808 that was based on the Spanish manual alphabet.][ In 1977, the Danish Deaf Association adopted 'the international manual alphabet', which was an almost exact copy of the American manual alphabet, with minor differences and additional signs for the æ, ø and å.][
Norwegian Sign Language is generally thought to be a descendant of DSL. However, it may well be a mixture of DSL and indigenous sign, parallel to the situation between Swedish Sign Language and ]Finnish Sign Language
Finnish Sign Language () is the sign language most commonly used in Finland. There are 3,000 ''(2012 estimate)'' Finnish deaf who have Finnish Sign Language as a first language. As the Finnish system records users by their written language, no ...
.[
Icelandic Sign Language is closer; 37% of a set of analyzed signs (Aldersson 2006) were completely different in structure and a further 16% were similar but not the same. Faroese Sign Language and Greenlandic Sign Language are more clearly dialects of DSL.
]
See also
* Deafness in Denmark
References
External links
Ordbog over Dansk Tegnsprog
A free online DSL dictionary.
* Aldersson, Russell R. and Lisa J. McEntee-Atalianis. 2007. A Lexical Comparison of Icelandic Sign Language and Danish Sign Language. ''Birkbeck Studies in Applied Linguistics'' Vol 2
A Lexical Comparison of Icelandic Sign Language and Danish Sign Language
Sign Language Studies , October 1, 2008 , Aldersson, Russell R; McEntee-Atalianis, Lisa J , 700+ words
{{French Sign Language languages
French Sign Language family
Danish Sign Language family
Languages of Denmark
Languages of the Faroe Islands
Languages of Greenland