New Zealand Sign Language

Information about New Zealand Sign Language

New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL)
Spoken in:	New Zealand
Region:
Total speakers:
Ranking:
Genetic classification:
Official status
Official language of:
Regulated by:
Language codes
ISO 639-1
ISO 639-2	sgn-NZ
SIL
See also: Language – List of languages

New Zealand Sign Language or NZSL is the main language of the deaf community in New Zealand. It became an official language of New Zealand in April 2006, alongside Māori and English.

New Zealand Sign Language has its roots in British Sign Language (BSL), and may be technically considered a dialect of British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language (BANZSL). There are 62.5% similarities found in British Sign Language and NZSL, compared with 33% of NZSL signs found in American Sign Language.

Like other natural sign languages, it was devised by and for Deaf people, with no linguistic connection to a spoken or written language, and it is fully capable of expressing anything a fluent signer wants to say.

It uses the same two-handed manual alphabet as British Sign Language and Auslan, Australian Sign Language.

It uses more lip-patterns in conjunction with hand and facial movement to cue signs than BSL, reflecting New Zealand's history of oralist education of Deaf people. Its vocabulary includes Māori concepts such as marae and tangi, and signs for New Zealand placenames. (E.g Rotorua - mudpools, Wellington - windy breeze, Auckland - Sky Tower, Christchurch - 2 Cs, represents ChCh.)

History

The first non-Polynesian immigrants to New Zealand were from Britain, and those who were Deaf brought British Sign Language with them. The first known teacher of sign language was Dorcas Mitchell, who taught the children of one family in Charteris Bay, Lyttelton Harbour, from 1868 to 1877. By 1877 she had taught 42 pupils. When the first school for the Deaf (then called the Sumner Deaf and Dumb Institution) was opened at Sumner, south east of Christchurch in 1878, she applied unsuccessfully for the position of principal. Instead it went to Gerrit Van Asch, who agreed with the Milan congress of deaf educators of 1880 (to which no Deaf people were invited) that teaching should be oral only, and that sign language should be forbidden. (He would not even admit pupils who could sign, so only 14 were admitted.) This was the policy of the school until 1979. A documentary film about the school made in the 1950s makes no mention of sign language. Similar policies were maintained at the schools at Titirangi and Kelston that opened in 1940 and 1958. Unsurprisingly, the children used sign language secretly and after leaving school, developing NZSL out of British Sign Language largely without adult intervention for over 100 years. The main haven for NZSL was the Deaf Clubs in the main centres. In 1979, "Total Communication" (a "use anything that works" philosophy) was adopted at the Sumner School, but the signing it used was "Australasian Sign Language" an artificial signed form of English. As a result, younger signers use a number of Australasian signs in their NZSL, to such an extent that some call traditional NZSL "Old Sign". NZSL was adopted for teaching in 1994.

In 1985, Marianne Ahlgren proved in her PhD thesis at Victoria University of Wellington that NZSL is a fully-fledged language, with a large vocabulary of signs and a consistent grammar of space.

The NZ Sign Language Tutors' Association (NZSLTA) was set up in 1992. Over the next few years adult education classes in NZSL began in several centres. In 1997 a Deaf Studies course was started at Victoria University of Wellington.

An important step toward the recognition of NZSL was the publication in 1998 of a comprehensive NZSL dictionary by Victoria University and the Deaf Association of NZ. It contains some 4000 signs (which correspond to many more meanings than the same number of English words, because of the way signs can be modulated in space and time), sorted by handshape, not English meaning, and coded in the Hamburg Notational System, HamNoSys, as well as pictorially.

For some years, TVNZ broadcast a weekly news programme, "News Review", interpreted in NZSL. This was discontinued in 1993 after a joint survey of Deaf and hearing-impaired people found a majority favoured captioned programmes. Many Deaf people felt they had been misled by the survey. There has been no regular programming in NZSL since.

Official language status

NZSL became the third official language of New Zealand in April 2006, joining English and Māori. The parliamentary bill to approve this passed its third reading on April 6 2006^[1]. At the first reading in Parliament, on June 22, 2004, the bill was supported by all political parties. It was referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee, which reported back to the House on July 18, 2005. The second reading passed 119 to 2 on February 23, 2006 with only the ACT party opposing because the government is not providing funding for NZSL. ^[2] It passed the third reading on April 6, 2006 with the same margin. ^[3]

The bill received Royal Assent, a constitutional formality, on 10 April 2006.^[4] New Zealand Sign Language became an official language of New Zealand the day after Royal Assent.

The use of NZSL as a valid medium of instruction has not always been accepted by the Government, the Association of Teachers of the Deaf, or many parents. However, in light of much research into its validity as a language and much advocacy by deaf adults, parents of deaf children (both hearing and deaf) and educationalists, NZSL has since become — in tandem with English — part of the bilingual/bicultural approach used in public schools (including Kelston Deaf Education Centre and Van Asch Deaf Education Centre) since 1994. Victoria University of Wellington has courses in New Zealand Sign Language, although it has yet to develop a major program for it. AUT teaches a diploma course for NZSL interpreting.

Variants

Differences in lexicon in New Zealand Sign Language have largely developed through the student communities surrounding four schools for the deaf in New Zealand:

Van Asch Deaf Education Centre (former Sumner School for the Deaf), opened 1880
St Dominic's School for the Deaf, opened 1944 in Wellington, moved to Feilding in 1953
Titirangi School for the Deaf, opened 1944
Kelston School for the Deaf, opened 1958

References

1. ^ for sign language", TVNZ
2. ^ Hansard 20060323. Accessed 2007-05-27.
3. ^ Hansard 20060406. Accessed 2007-05-27.
4. ^ Governor-General gives assent to Sign Language Bill, Press Release: Governor General, 10 April 2006. Retrieved 11 April 2006.

External links

Anthem
"God Defend New Zealand"
"God Save the Queen"¹

Capital Wellington

Largest city Auckland
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This is a list of languages, ordered by the number of native-language speakers, with some data for second-language use. Languages are listed for secondary locations only when spoken by more than 1% of the population.
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A language family is a group of languages related by descent from a common ancestor, called the proto-language. As with biological families, the evidence of relationship is observable shared characteristics.
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This is a list of bodies that regulate standard languages.

Afrikaans Die Taalkommissie, South Africa
Arabic Academy of the Arabic Language (مجمع اللغة العربية, Syria, Egypt, Jordan,
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ISO 639 is the set of international standards that lists short codes for language names.

ISO 639 consists of different parts, of which two parts have been approved and a third part that is in the final approval (FDIS) stage. The other parts are works in progress.
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Ethnologue: Languages of the World is a web and print publication of SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics), a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages primarily to provide the speakers with Bibles in
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See Language (journal) for the linguistics journal.

A language is a system of symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon.
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lists of languages:

List of languages by name
List of languages by writing system
List of languages by number of native speakers
Ethnologue list of most spoken languages

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Deaf community and Deaf culture are two phrases used to refer to cultures comprised of people who are culturally Deaf as opposed to those who are deaf from the medical/audiological/pathological perspective.
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Anthem
"God Defend New Zealand"
"God Save the Queen"¹

Capital Wellington

Largest city Auckland
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An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in the countries, states, and other territories. It is typically the language used in a nation's legislative bodies, though the law in many nations requires that government documents be produced in other
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English}}}
Writing system: Latin (English variant)
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng
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British Sign Language (BSL) is the sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK), and is the first or preferred language of an unknown number of Deaf people in the UK (published estimates range from 70,000 to 250,000 but it is likely that the lower figures are more accurate).
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BANZSL, or British, Australian and New Zealand Sign Language, is the language of which British Sign Language (BSL), Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) may be considered dialects.
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American Sign Language (ASL; less commonly Ameslan) is the dominant sign language of the Deaf community in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in parts of Mexico.
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sign language (also signed language) is a language which uses manual communication, body language and lip patterns instead of sound to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to
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deaf is used differently in different contexts, and there is some controversy over its meaning and implications. In scientific and medical terms, deafness generally refers to a physical condition characterized by lack of sensitivity to sound.
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written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages.
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Several manual alphabets in use around the world employ two hands for some or all of the letters.

BANZSL alphabet

This alphabet is used in the BANZSL group of sign languages.
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Auslan is the sign language of the Australian deaf community. The term Auslan is a portmanteau of "Australian sign language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the early 1980s, although the language itself is much older.
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Manualism and oralism are two opposing philosophies regarding the education of the deaf. Manualism is the education of deaf students using sign language and oralism is the education of deaf students using spoken language.
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A vocabulary is a set of words known to a person or other entity, or that are part of a specific language.

The vocabulary of a person is defined either as the set of all words that are understood by that person or the set of all words likely to be used by that person when
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marae (in New Zealand Māori, Cook Islands Maori, Tahitian) malaʻe (in Tongan), malae (in Samoan and Hawaiian), is a sacred place which served both religious and social purposes in pre-Christian
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Rotorua is a town on the southern shore of Lake Rotorua in the Bay of Plenty region of the North Island of New Zealand, and Rotorua District is the encompassing local authority area. The city has a population of 64,509.
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For the first Duke of Wellington, see .

Wellington (unofficially Te Whanganui-a-Tara^[1] or Poneke^[2]
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The Auckland metropolitan area or Greater Auckland, in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest urban area of the country. It is also New Zealand's most populous city with over 1.3 million people, it has over a quarter of the country's population (32.
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Sky Tower is an observation and telecommunications tower located on the corner of Victoria and Federal Streets in the central business district of Auckland, New Zealand. It is 328 metres tall, as measured from ground level to the top of the mast, making it the tallest free-standing
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Christchurch (Māori: Ōtautahi) is the regional capital of Canterbury, New Zealand. The largest city in the South Island, it is also the second largest city and third largest urban area of New Zealand.
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Lyttelton Harbour is one of two major inlets in Banks Peninsula, on the coast of Canterbury, New Zealand. (The other is Akaroa Harbour.)

It is approximately 15 km in length, from its mouth to Teddington.
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