Brazilian Sign Language

"Libras" redirects here. For other uses, see Libra (disambiguation).
Brazilian Sign Language
Libras
Native to Brazil and Brazilian diaspora
Region Urban areas
Native speakers
 3 million (no date)[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3 bzs
Glottolog braz1236[3]

Brazilian Sign Language (BSL), also known as "Libras" (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈlibɾɐs], from "Língua Brasileira de Sinais" [ˈlĩɡwɐ bɾaziˈlejɾɐ dʒi siˈnajs]) and variously abbreviated as LSB, LGB or LSCB (Brazilian Cities Sign Language),[4] is the sign language used by deaf communities of urban Brazil.

Recognition and status

Brazilian Sign Language is well-established; several dictionaries, instructional videos and a number of articles on the linguistic features of the language have been published. It has dialects across Brazil reflecting regional and sociocultural differences.

A strong sign language law was passed by the National Congress of Brazil on April 24, 2002, and (in 2005) is in the process of being implemented.[5] The law mandates the use of Brazilian Sign Language in education and government services.

Educational approaches has evolved from oralism to Total Communication and bilingualism.

Alphabet

BSL fingerspelling uses a one-handed manual alphabet similar to that used by the French Sign Language family.[6]

There are 44 distinct handshapes used in the language.[4]

Transcription of the alphabet using SignWriting has been in place since at least 1997 with the SignNet Project in Porto Alegre and Fernando Capovilla's dictionaries in São Paulo. The University of Santa Catarina at Florianopolis (UFSC) has required courses in SignWriting as the preferred form of LIBRAS transcription.

SignWriting is cited as being useful in the pedagogy of young children. http://www.signwriting.org/archive/docs6/sw0580_BR_Aquisicao_Escrita_Sinais_2007.pdf

Deaf and sign language organizations

The most important deaf organization is FENEIS, the Federação Nacional de Educação e Integração dos Surdos (National Federation of Deaf Education and Integration). There are a number of regional organizations in Curitiba, Caxias do Sul and Rio Grande do Sul.

Classification

Wittmann (1991)[2] posits that Brazilian Sign Language is a language isolate (a 'prototype' sign language), though one developed through stimulus diffusion from an existing sign language, likely Portuguese Sign Language and/or French Sign Language.

See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Brazilian Sign Language at Ethnologue (17th ed., 2013)
  2. 1 2 Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 10:1.215–88.
  3. ↑ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin; Bank, Sebastian, eds. (2016). "Brazilian Sign Language". Glottolog 2.7. Jena: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
  4. 1 2 Ferreira-Brito, Lucinda and Langevin, Rémi (1994), The Sublexical Structure of a Sign Language, Mathématiques, Informatique et Sciences Humaines 32:125, 1994, pp. 17–40
  5. ↑ LIBRAS law (in Portuguese) Archived April 26, 2005, at the Wayback Machine.
  6. ↑ LIBRAS manual alphabet

References

Brazilian Sign Language test of Wikipedia at Wikimedia Incubator
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/29/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.