Taiwanese Sign Language

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Taiwanese Sign Language Taiwan Ziran Shouyu
Signed in:	Taiwan
Total signers:	82,558 (2001)
Language family:	influenced by Japanese Sign Language (50% intelligibility), some influence from mainland Chinese Sign Language and Hong Kong Sign Language
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	`sgn-TW`
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	`tss`
sign language — list of sign languages — legal recognition

Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL) is the sign language most commonly used in Taiwan. It is the native language of some 50,000 people in the Republic of China.

TSL was heavily influenced by Japanese Sign Language during Japanese rule and thus has some mutual intelligibility with both Japanese Sign Language and Korean Sign Language. After the retrocession of Taiwan to the ROC, Taiwan absorbed an influx of sign language users from mainland China who influenced TSL through teaching methods and loanwords.

There are two main dialects of TSL centered around two of the three major sign language schools in Taiwan: one in Taipei, the other in Tainan (the Taichung school used a sign language essentially the same as the Tainan school).

Serious linguistic research on TSL began in the 1970s and is continuing at present. The first International Symposium on Taiwan Sign Language Linguistics was held on March 1-2, 2003, at Chung Cheng University in Minhsiung, Chiayi Co., Taiwan.

[edit] References

(1999) Shih Wen-han & Ting Li-fen: Shou Neng Sheng Ch'iao Vol. I, 13th ed., Taipei: National Association of the Deaf in the Republic of China.
Huteson, Greg (2003). Report on Social, Educational, and Sociolinguistic Issues that Impact the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Population of Taiwan (English) (PDF). SIL International.