The Swedish Sign Language family is a language family of sign languages including Swedish Sign Language, Portuguese Sign Language, Finnish Sign Language, Finland-Swedish Sign Language, Cape Verdean Sign Language, Eritrean Sign Language and, with uncertain membership, the sign language of Sao Tome and Principe. Its geographic distribution runs from Scandinavia through Portugal and extends to Eritrea and Cape Verde in Africa.
Facts
RegionEurope and parts of Africa. 1 Proto-Language StatusNo single proto-language has been reconstructed. Wittmann (1991) proposes the family descends from British Sign Language, while Anderson (1979) instead proposes a shared, unreconstructed North-West European ancestor common to the Swedish, German and British Sign Language families. Signed language use in the Nordic countries is attested from the 18th century, with the Swedish Sign Language family becoming distinct from the Danish Sign Language family after a 19th-century political split. 1 Partially Attested
Speaker CountNo family-wide aggregate is published. Swedish Sign Language, the family's founding member, is reported at around 13,000 native signers and 30,000 signers in total per the cited source's own Nordic Branch section. Portuguese, Finnish, Finland-Swedish, Cape Verdean and Eritrean Sign speaker counts are not included. Sources
1. Wikipedia: Swedish Sign Language Family
Wikimedia FoundationInfobox language family, region field
Europe, Africa
History section, paragraph 1
There is evidence of usage of signed languages in the Nordic countries from the 18th century, but the later 19th century political situation split the Nordic sign languages into two distinct language families, the Swedish Sign Language family and the Danish Sign Language family.
Nordic Branch section
There are around 13.000 native speakers and a total of 30.000 speakers.
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