Sri Lankan Sign Language () is a
visual language
A visual language is a system of communication using visual elements. Speech as a means of communication cannot strictly be separated from the whole of human communicative activity which includes the visual and the term 'language' in relation t ...
used by
deaf
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 ...
people in
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
and has regional variations stemming from the 25 Deaf schools in Sri Lanka.
Classification
Wittmann (1991)
posits that the Sri Lankan languages, as a group, are a language isolate ('prototype' sign language), though one developed through
stimulus diffusion from an existing sign language. It is not known if they are related to each other, nor how many there are.
References
External links
Sri Lankan sign language
{{sign language navigation
Sign language isolates
Languages of Sri Lanka
Deaf culture in Sri Lanka
Language isolates of Asia