Chinese Sign Language

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Modern Chinese Sign Language (CSL) developed around the 14th century.

The first deaf school using Chinese Sign Language was created by the American missionary C.R. Mills and his wife in the year 1887, but just as British Sign Language did not influence American Sign Language, neither did American Sign Language influence Chinese Sign Language in the slightest.

Schools, workshops and/or farms in different areas for the Deaf are the main ways that CSL has been able to spread in China so well. Other Deaf who are not connected to these gathering places tend to use sign languages that they made up so that no one else can understand it.

The Chinese National Association of the Deaf (ROC) was created by the Deaf People mostly from the United States. The biggest reason for the organization of the Deaf in China was to raise quality of living for the Deaf which was behind the quality of living standards provided for the other disabled. The members of the ROC worked together to better the welfare of the Deaf, to encourage education of Deaf and Chinese Sign Language, and to promote the Deaf Community in China.

Essay Written on the subject.

China is a very large country with a long history, so therefore it comes as no surprise that the Chinese language has a long history as well, and Chinese Sign Language is one of the most recent additions. Chinese has been unified and simplified over centuries, spawning many variations on how to write and speak the language. Chinese is a pictorial language in which the written language is based on pictures instead of the Latin characters of western written languages that correspond to particular phonetics. Today, the Chinese spoken language still has many dialects by geographic region. One spoken dialect may be unintelligible to another, but the written language is unified so everyone in China can read the same characters. Chinese also has somewhat of a phonetic Chinese alphabet to help spell out the pronunciation of words based on the pinyin system. Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that the same phonetic pronunciation with a different intonation has a different meaning. Chinese Sign Language has elements to reflect all these intertwining systems incorporated within the Chinese language.

An American missionary named C. R. Mills established the first school for the deaf in China in 1887. Though an American established the first deaf school, it was an oral school so American Sign Language did not have a strong influence on Chinese Sign Language. Chinese Sign Language only started to really be developed in the late 1950’s making it a relatively new language. Chinese Sign Language has many variations within Mainland China. The dialect used in Shanghai is the most prominent, but other dialects include: Hong Kong (HKSL), Taiwan Sign Language (which has 2 subdialects), and Tibetan Sign Language. The Shanghai dialect is also spoken in Malaysia and Taiwan.

There is a growing awareness about deaf education and care in China. China Disabled Persons’ Federation website reports that China has 21 million people with hearing loss. There is a bilingual-bicultural school for the deaf and a deaf university in China’s third largest city, Tianjin. For the majority of the last 50 years, CSL has been discouraged, even banned from most classrooms. Instead an oral-only policy has been pushed. The China Disabled People’s Federation runs nearly 1,500 pre-school “hearing rehabilitation centers” established since the 1980s. Less than 10% of the children who attend these schools are able to have an adequate enough grasp on the Chinese spoken language to enter public school. The few who enrolled in public school were children with residual hearing or who were able to afford cochlear implants. As mentioned before, Chinese is a tonal language, making it very difficult for deaf children to learn to speak, for they can’t see the changes in tones that drastically change the meanings of words. Most deaf children leave school with an education three grades lower than their hearing peers, presenting few job opportunities available to them. Only recently have the local authorities in Tianjin with the cooperation of organizations such as UNICEF begun to create new job opportunities to the deaf population. In 2001 the Tianjin school for the Deaf adopted Chinese Sign Language as their main method of communication and made an effort to have deaf employees. The school has had very positive results in education and attitude among the students. The Tianjin Technical College for the Deaf, a partner in PEN-International at the Tianjin University of Technology, is the first technical college for deaf Chinese students. The college was established in 1991 and focuses on computer technology education, giving deaf Chinese students an opportunity to work outside of a factory. Now there are also schools for the deaf in Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, Chefoo, and Hong Kong.

Despite the growing awareness about deaf needs, there is a lack of awareness about deaf culture and what constitutes deaf culture, even among the deaf community. Chinese people seem to view deafness as a disability, even deaf people view themselves as disabled. Many parents of deaf children spend tens of thousands of yuan on various types of medicine to “cure” the deafness. Treatments include: acupuncture, Chinese medicine rehabilitation centers and hearing aids. Many parents believe that sign language will only inhibit their child’s ability to speak and therefore see signing as a bad influence and have forbidden their children to associate with others in the deaf community. As a result of this kind of upbringing, many deaf people have difficulty coming to terms with their deaf identity and often look down upon deaf people. Many deaf students would prefer a hearing teacher to a deaf one as a result of this stigma. There are no role models to look up to for no famous deaf people are known within China. Deaf people in China commonly try to integrate with the mainstream and do not want to be associated with the deaf community. The schools have begun a movement of embracing deaf culture, but the change is slow. More facilities are now available to the deaf community than ever before. There are more schools specialized for the deaf, and in Shanghai there is a medical center focused on hearing loss and oral communication that is jointly run by the Shanghai health bureau and Fudan University.

Similar to American Sign Language, Chinese Sign Language is mostly conveyed through shapes and motions joined with facial expressions. Since the written language is already pictorial, many of the Chinese signs reflect the written word. For example, two index fingers touching in an inverted “v” means “ren” (person) because the written character looks exactly like the shape the fingers form. Since Chinese is a pictorial language there is no alphabet, but there is an alphabet for spelling out pronunciations called pinyin that CSL also uses. CSL also has a system of “blinks” used to communicate tones, usually expressed as a change in gaze or a slight head turn. They usually occur at either the beginning or the end of a sign.

The Chinese culture and language heavily influence signs in CSL. For example there is no generic word for brother in CSL, only two distinct signs, one for older brother and one for younger brother. This is because in China, birth order carries a lot of weight that is reflected in the fact that Chinese has no generic word for brother. Similarly, the sign for eat incorporates a pictorial representation for chopsticks instead of using the hand as in ASL.

Sources: 1. CSL: Chinese Sign Language. http://library.thinkquest.org/11942/csl.htm

2. About.com article http://deafness.about.com/od/internationaldeaf/a/chinesedeaf.htm

3. Seen Not Heard by Cassie Biggs. From Weekend: February 26-27, 2005 http://deafness.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=deafness&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestandard.com.hk%2Fstdn%2Fstd%2FWeekend%2FGB26Jp01.html 4.Chinese Sign Language: A language of China, ISO 639-2: sgn, http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp 5. Chinese Sign Language: by Elizabeth T. Yeh, 10/28/04 http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/chinesesignlanguage.htm