Lithuanian Sign Language (LGK, Lithuanian: Lietuvių gestų kalba) is the national

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 ...

used in Lithuania, with several regional variants. Very little is known about its history before 1945. From 1945 to 1990 it was used along with

Russian Sign Language Russian Sign Language (RSL) is the sign language used by the Deaf community in Russia and possibly Ukraine, Belarus and Tajikistan. It belongs to the French Sign Language family. RSL is a natural language with a grammar that differs from spoke ...

and the two sign languages became very similar. Russian lip-patterns used with some LGK signs indicate that the sign may have been originally borrowed from Russian Sign Language. When Lithuania became independent, its contacts with Russian Sign Language were almost cut off, and now it's developing as an independent language, with some influence from international signs. Linguistic research of LGK started in 1996, when it was recognized as the native language of the Deaf. Since then, a Lithuanian Sign Language Dictionary (based on traditional word to sign principle) was published in 5 volumes (including about 3000 signs), along with some thematic vocabularies and bilingual texts in LGK and Lithuanian (including ''Adam's book''). Now work is being done on an LGK database and sign language teaching materials for parents of deaf children, teachers teaching deaf students and sign language interpreters.

References

* Kupčinskas, Dainora (natively Kupčinskaitė, Dainora), (1999). ''Issues in standardizing Lithuanian Sign Language,'' Lituanus 45.1:17–20. Sign languages Languages of Lithuania French Sign Language family {{sign-lang-stub