Village sign language

A village sign language, or village sign, also known as a shared sign language, is a local indigenous sign language used by both deaf and hearing in an area with a high incidence of congenital deafness. Meir et al. define a village sign language as one which "arise[s] in an existing, relatively insular community into which a number of deaf children are born."^[1] The term "rural sign language" refers to almost the same concept.^[2] In many cases, the sign language is known throughout the community by a large portion of the hearing population. These languages generally include signs derived from gestures used by the hearing population, so that neighboring village sign languages may be lexically similar without being actually related, due to local similarities in cultural gestures which preceded the sign languages. Most village sign languages are endangered due to the spread of formal education for the deaf, which use or generate deaf-community sign languages, such as a national or foreign sign language.

When a language is not shared with the village or hearing community as a whole, but is only used within a few families and their friends, it may be distinguished as a family sign language. In such cases, most of the hearing signers may be native speakers of the language, if they are members of one of these families, or acquired it at a young age.