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Ethnologue > Web version > Country index > Asia > Taiwan > Taiwan Sign Language

Taiwan Sign Language

A language of Taiwan

ISO 639-3: tss

Population	No estimate available.
Alternate names	Taiwan Ziran Shouyu
Dialects	Taipei, Tainan, Kaohsiung. 2 major dialects. Sources from which the sign language developed were indigenous sign systems before 1895, Japanese occupation and education 1895–1946, Mainland Chinese Sign Language brought by refugees in 1949 and some from Hong Kong since. Lexical similarity: 50% with Japanese Sign Language [jsl].
Classification	Deaf sign language
Comments	Quite different from (Mainland) Chinese Sign Language [csl]; only a few signs the same or similar. Not related to Taiwanese languages. Some signs borrowed from Mandarin through palmwriting. There is also a Signed Mandarin (Wenfa Shouyu). 1,540 special education schools in Taiwan in 2002, which includes schools for the deaf.

Entries from the SIL Bibliography about this language:

Academic Publications

HURLBUT, Hope M., author. 2008. "A survey of sign language in Taiwan."  

HUTESON, Greg, author. 2003. "Report on social, educational, and sociolinguistic issues that impact the deaf and hard of hearing population of Taiwan."