The celebrate New Zealand Sign Language Week, we bring you some fun facts on NZSL.
NZSL History
Historical evidence about the earliest use of NZSL is sketchy, but recent research shows that it is closely related to British Sign Language (BSL) and Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Apparently, BSL found its way to New Zealand with immigrants from the United Kingdom during the nineteenth century (Collins-Ahlgren 1989; Dugdale 2000), and it is likely that a distinct variety of NZSL began to develop among the pupils of the first residential school for the Deaf which opened in 1880 at Sumner, Christchurch.
Is there a Māori sign language?
While there are signs for Māori words and phrases which people refer to as Māori signs there is not a distinct Māori Sign Language. This is because sign languages develop in communities of Deaf people who share the common experience of being excluded from the spoken language communities around them. Natural sign languages do not originate from, nor match, a spoken language – they have an independent structure and system of meaning based in the visual experience of Deaf people.
NZSL is the common language that has developed over many generations of Deaf people from Māori, Pākeha and other ethnic backgrounds in New Zealand.
To learn more about NZSL you can visit the New Zealand Sign Language website.
Image courtesy of NZSL.
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