Background


Malaysian Sign Language (Malay: Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia, or BIM), is the sign language in every day use in many parts of Malaysia. BIM has many dialects, differing from state to state.
Malaysian Sign Language was born when the Malaysian Federation of the Deaf was established in 1998 and use has expanded among deaf leaders and participants. American Sign Language (ASL) has had a strong influence on BIM, but the two are considered different languages. BIM in turn has been the basis for Indonesian Sign Language.
Kod Tangan Bahasa Malaysia or Manually Coded Malay (KTBM) was created by hearing educators and linguists in between 1980 and 1986 and remains the only sign language recognized by the Malaysian Ministry of Education.
Other sign languages in use in Malaysia include Penang Sign Language (PSL) and Selangor Sign Language (SSL or KLSL). These two sign languages began in 1980 before MySL/BIM when Penang, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur became popular destinations among employment opportunities, entertainments, disability benefits. Additionally, every parent of deaf children has own signs called Home signs to make a gestural communication. The use of such home signs among peranakan or ethnic Chinese users of BIM may be behind controversy over the supposed influence of Chinese Sign Languages, which does not seem to be well documented and may merely be based on ethnic stereotyping.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysian_Sign_Language


Manually Coded Malay


Kod Tangan Bahasa Malaysia (KTBM), or Manually Coded Malay, is the only form of sign language recognised by the government in Malaysia as the language of communication for the Deaf.
It is also referred to as Bahasa Malaysia Kod Tangan, which is the form found in the Ethnologue.
It is adapted from American Sign Language, with the addition of some local signs, and grammatical signs representing affixation of nouns and verbs as used inMalay. It is used in Deaf schools for the purpose of teaching the Malay language.
Penang Sign Language
Penang Sign Language (PSL[citation needed]) was developed in Malaysia by deaf children, outside the classroom, whenoralism was predominant. It is now mainly used by older people, although many younger people can understand it.

  • History

Penang Sign Language began when the first school for the deaf, Federation School for the Deaf (FSD), was established by the British Lady Templer in 1954. Lady Templer was the wife of the Pesuruhjaya Tinggi Malaya of Malaysia, before Malaysia's Independence in 1957. Deaf students went to FSD, which was ruled by British Special Education, to learn oral skills, not sign language. However, the students would sign by themselves in the dormitory of FSD every night.
In the 1960s, Tan Yap went to Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. to learn deaf culture and sign language. He brought an ASL book back with him to Malaysia. But Tan Yap's suggestions were rejected by the Government. (Tan Yap now lives in Kuala Lumpur. He is considered the father of the Deaf in Malaysia.)
American Professor Frances Parsons declared that none of the students could speak a perfect sentence. Parsons travelled around the world in 1976 in order to introduce Total Communication and Sign Language to poor schools for the Deaf, in order to better prepare them for education. In the same year, Frances Parsons went to Kuala Lampur to meet with Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the Minister of Education (before he became a Prime Minister in 1981). After a 45-minute discussion, Dr Mahathir agreed with Parsons's suggestions and theory. In the next few days, Dr. Mahathir announced new legislation that obliged schools in Malaysia to teach Total Communication and Sign Language. Manchester-trained teachers were unhappy with the new law and protested Mohamad's decision. As a result, BIM (Bahasa Isyarat Malaysia) or MSL (Malaysian Sign Language) became similar to American Sign Language after 1976.
Selangor Sign Language
Selangor Sign Language (SSL), also known as Kuala Lumpur Sign Language (KLSL), is a sign language used inMalaysia. It was originally based on American Sign Language (ASL) but has diverged significantly enough to now be considered a language in its own right. It is used mainly in the state of Selangor, rather than Kuala Lumpur, so the deafthemselves call it Selangor Sign Language.
Like Penang Sign Language (PSL), it now mainly used by older people, although many younger people can understand it.
Home Sign
Home sign (or kitchen sign) is the gestural communication system developed by a deaf child who lacks input from a language model in the family. This is a common experience for deaf children with hearing parents who are isolated from a sign language community.
While not developing into a complete language (as linguists understand the term), home sign systems show some of the same characteristics of signed and spoken languages, and are quite distinguishable from the gestures that accompany speech. Words and simple sentences are formed, often in similar patterns despite different home sign systems being developed in isolation from each other. Comparisons are often made between home sign and pidgins.
Linguists have been interested in home sign for the insights it offers into our capacity to generate, acquire and process language in general — particularly exploring such questions as the origins of language; notions of linguistic universals; a critical period for language acquisition; children's natural tendency to invent language (language acquisition device), and the relationship between gesture and language. The experience of home signers is contrasted with that of feral children who, with no human social interaction, develop no language at all.

Home sign and sign languages

Nancy Frishberg set out a framework for identifying and describing home-based sign systems in 1987. She states that home signs differ from sign languages in that they:
  • do not have a consistent meaning-symbol relationship,
  • do not pass on from generation to generation,
  • are not shared by one large group,
  • and are not considered the same over a community of signers.
However, home sign is often the starting point for new deaf sign languages that emerge when deaf people come together. For example, following the establishment of the first deaf schools in Nicaragua in the 1970s, the previously isolated deaf children quickly developed their own sign language, now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language, from the building blocks of their own diverse home sign systems.
Home sign also played a part in the formation of American Sign Language, which is a blend of home sign, Old French Sign Language, Martha's Vineyard Sign Language and Plains Indian Sign Language.

[edit]Prominent studies of home sign

  • Susan Goldin-Meadow has published a number of articles on home sign systems. She found that the home sign gestures of American deaf children are not acquired from modelling the gestures of their hearing parents — they more closely resemble the gestures of the Chinese deaf children halfway across the globe. They are structured communication systems that include gestures that function as words, which are combined to form sentences, and are used to describe situations beyond the here-and-now.
  • Adam Kendon published a celebrated study of the homesign system of a deaf Enga woman from the Papua New Guinea highlands, in which he investigated the notion of iconicity in language and gesture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_sign
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