Chinese Sign Language is the main sign language used in China, with about 4.2 million signers as of a 2021 estimate, and forms its own family rather than descending from another national sign language tradition. It has two principal regional varieties, a Northern variety centered on Beijing that shows influence from American Sign Language introduced through the Chefoo School, and a Southern variety based in Shanghai that shows influence from French Sign Language; Hong Kong Sign Language descends from the Southern variety but has diverged enough through independent development to be considered a separate language today. Chinese Sign Language is distinct from Taiwan Sign Language and from Wenfa Shouyu, a manually coded form of written Mandarin, and it shares some structural features with British Sign Language, possibly reflecting historical contact in Shanghai.
Facts
RegionChina and some parts of Taiwan 1 Speaker Count Proto-Language StatusChinese Sign Language has no reconstructed ancestral proto-language and is treated as its own family rather than a descendant of another national sign language: it developed independently from deaf schools established in China in 1887 and 1897, and is not genetically related to Taiwan Sign Language, Malaysian Sign Language or Tibetan Sign Language. 1 Sources
1. Wikipedia: Chinese Sign Language
Wikimedia Foundationinfobox parameters: states, speakers, dateQuote, infobox parameters: states, speakers, date
states = [[China]] and some parts of [[Taiwan]]
| speakers = {{sigfig|4.200000|2}} million
| date = 2021
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.