Latvian Sign Language ( lv, latviešu zīmju valoda) is a

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 ...

commonly used by deaf people in

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

. Linguists use LSL as an acronym for Latvian Sign Language.

Policy and education

The Official Language Law of 9 December 1999, which came into force on 1 September 2000, gave Latvian Sign Language a legal status in Section 3.3, which stipulates: 'The State shall ensure the development and use of the Latvian sign language for communication with people with impaired hearing.' Since 2008, Latvia has been screening newborns for hearing impairment. The majority of Latvian DHI (deaf and hearing impaired) children live in boarding schools instead of with their families. The country has two specialist schools for DHI children that offer elementary education over a period of 10 or 12 years, one of which uses LSL and signed Latvian in instruction, while the other uses spoken language. In both schools, children primarily communicate amongst themselves in sign language. Aside from the two specialist schools, some schools exist which provide separate classes for DHI children, while in the remaining schools DHI children learn alongside their peers with normal hearing.

Research

Latvian Sign Language is claimed to have separated from

French Sign Language French Sign Language (french: langue des signes française, LSF) is the sign language of the deaf in France and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. According to '' Ethnologue'', it has 100,000 native signers. French Sign Language is rela ...

some time around 1806. Mahoney (2017) conducted the first-known 100-word Swadesh–Woodward list comparison of Latvian Sign Language and

Estonian Sign Language Estonian Sign Language ( et, eesti viipekeel, EVK) is the national sign language of Estonia. History and character Research into the origins and nature of EVK did not begin until the late 1980s, so many details remain unknown. Ulrike Zeshan ( ...

(EVK), concluding that a possible relationship between them – as descending from

VLFS Very large floating structures (VLFSs) or very large floating platforms (VLFPs) are artificial islands, which may be constructed to create floating airports, bridges, breakwaters, piers and docks, storage facilities (for oil and natural gas ...

, perhaps via ÖGS and/or RSL, as Wittmann (1991) and Bickford (2005) proposed – was 'still uncertain as it is unclear how sign languages disseminated in Eastern European countries during the Soviet Union, but aside from superficial impressions that the core lexicons are similar, signs with shared parameters displaying small variation in handshape while retaining 4 selected fingers suggests that these languages share a parent'. She added that ' present there is no reason to assume that Estonian and Latvian sign language have a mother-daughter relationship'. Power et al. (2020) conducted a large-scale data study into the evolution and contemporary character of 76 of

manual alphabet Fingerspelling (or dactylology) is the representation of the letter (alphabet), letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) have often ...

s (MAs) of sign languages, concluding that Latvian Sign Language's manual alphabet showed characteristics that were both typical of a postulated 'Russian Group' (including Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Estonian Sign Language) as well as a postulated 'Polish Group' (including Polish and Lithuanian Sign Language), and was therefore placed in between.

References

External links

Sign language centre of Latvian Association of the Deaf

Dictionary
{{sign language navigation French Sign Language family Languages of Latvia