The Japanese Sign Language family is a language family of three mutually intelligible sign languages: Japanese Sign Language, Korean Sign Language and Taiwanese Sign Language. There is little difficulty in communication across the three, and Taiwanese Sign Language shares roughly 60 percent of its vocabulary with Japanese Sign Language while the three languages maintain broadly similar grammar.
Facts
Partially Attested
Speaker CountNo family-wide aggregate is published. Japanese Sign Language, the family's founding and largest member, is put at 317,000 signers in the cited source's own infobox, though the same source elsewhere reports a much lower Japanese Association for Sign Language Studies estimate of around 60,000, showing how uncertain the count is. Korean Sign Language and Taiwanese Sign Language speaker counts are not included. RegionEast Asia (Japan, Korea and Taiwan). 1 Proto-Language StatusNo comparative proto-language has been reconstructed. The family's shared ancestor is Japanese Sign Language itself, which coalesced through Japan's deaf-school system and spread to Korea and Taiwan via schools Japan established during its colonial occupations of Korea (1910 to 1945) and Taiwan (1895 to 1945). 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Japanese Sign Language Family
Wikimedia FoundationInfobox language family, region field
East Asia
History section, paragraph 2
Japan occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945 and Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. During these periods, Japan established schools for the hearing impaired and sent teachers from their previously established Japan schools to teach.
View the Source 2. Wikipedia: Japanese Sign Language
Wikimedia FoundationInfobox, speakers fieldQuote, Infobox, speakers field
317,000
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.