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Adamorobe Sign Language |
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Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) is a village sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana. It is used
by about 30 deaf and 1370 hearing people. Ethnologue reports a total of 3,400 signers, including hearing users, but a recent
census mentions a total of 1400 inhabitants. The Adamorobe community is notable for its unusually high incidence of hereditary
deafness, estimated at 2% of the total population, or 15% according to Ethnologue. In the past, this percentage is thought
to have been as high as 60%. Deaf people are fully incorporated into the community. Under these circumstances, AdaSL has developed
an indigenous sign language, fully independent from the country's standard Ghanaian Sign Language (which is related to American
Sign Language). AdaSL shares signs and prosodic features with some other sign languages in the region, such as Bura Sign Language,
but it has been suggested these similarities are due to culturally shared gestures rather than a genetic relationship. AdaSL
has features that set it apart from the sign languages of large deaf communities studied so far, including the absence of
classifier constructions for the expression of motion and location. Instead, AdaSL uses several types of serial verb constructions
also found in the surrounding oral language, Akan. Frishberg suggests that AdaSL may be related to the gestural trade jargon
used in the markets throughout West Africa. Thus AdaSL provides an interesting domain for research on cross-linguistic sign
languages. For over a decade, the deaf children of the village have attended a boarding school in Mampong-Akuapem, where the
ASL based Ghanaian Sign Language is used. As a consequence, this language has become the first language of these children
and their command of AdaSL is decreasing. This is likely to lead to a complete shift of the deaf community in Adamorobe to
Ghanaian Sign Language. As such, AdaSL is an endangered sign language. |
Names (more)[de] Adamorobe-Gebärdensprache[en] Adamorobe Sign Language [hr] Adamorobe [is] Adomoróbe-táknmál [ja] アダモロベ手話 [pt] Língua Gestual de Adamorobe [es] Lengua de señas adamorobe |
Language type : Living
Technical notes
This page is providing structured data for the language Adamorobe Sign Language. |
ISO 639 CodesISO 639-3 : adsLinked Data URIshttp://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/adshttp://dbpedia.org/resource/ISO_639:ads More URIs at sameas.org SourcesAuthority documentation for ISO 639 identifier: adsFreebase ISO 639-3 : ads GeoNames.org Country Information Publications Office of the European Union Metadata Registry : Countries and Languages |