Australian Irish Sign Language

This article is about the language related to Irish Sign Language spoken in Australia. For Australian Sign Language, see Auslan. For manual Indigenous languages in Australia, see Aboriginal Australian sign languages.
Australian Irish Sign Language
AISL
Native toAustralia
Native speakers
~100 (2017)[1]
Francosign
Language codes
ISO 639-3–
IETFisg-AU

Australian Irish Sign Language or AISL is a minority sign language in Australia. As a Francosign language, it is related to French Sign Language as opposed to Auslan which is a Banzsl language which is related to British Sign Language. AISL was brought to Australia from Ireland in 1875 by a group of Dominican nuns (including a Deaf nun) where three schools were established and used AISL as a language of instruction. Due to oralist policies, the use of AISL was discontinued as a language of instruction in the early 1950s. There are now around 100 signers of this language, most of who are in their early seventies and onwards, though there may be younger CODAs.[2]

  1. ^ Adam, Robert (2017). "Australian Irish Sign Language: a minority sign language within a larger sign language community". Endangered Languages Archive. Retrieved 24 December 2022.
  2. ^ "Australian Irish Sign Language: a minority sign language within a larger sign language community". Culture in Crisis. Retrieved 24 December 2022.