Danish Sign Language family

Danish Sign Language Family
West Scandinavian Sign
EthnicityDiverse
Deaf populations
Geographic
distribution		Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Madagascar
Linguistic classificationFrench Sign
  • Danish Sign Language Family
Subdivisions
Language codes
Glottologwest2993  (West Scandinavian Sign)

The Danish Sign Language family comprises three languages: Danish Sign Language, Norwegian Sign Language (including Malagasy Sign Language) and Icelandic Sign Language. It itself is a sub-language family within the larger French Sign Language family.[1]

Wittmann (1991) places Danish Sign in the French Sign Language family, although being also influenced by local pidgin Scandinavian Sign, which also influenced Swedish sign.

Ethnologue reports that Danish Sign Language is largely mutually intelligible with Swedish Sign, though Wittmann places DSL in the French Sign Language family and Swedish Sign in the British Sign Language family.[2]

Danish Sign Language family tree
French Sign
(c. 1760–present)		local/home sign
Danish Sign
(c. 1800–present)
Faroese Sign
(c. 1960–present)		Greenlandic Sign
(c. 1950–present)		Icelandic Sign
(c. 1910–present)		Norwegian Sign
(c. 1820–present)
Malagasy Sign
(c. 1950–present)
  1. ^ Bergman, Brita; Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth (2010). "Transmission of sign languages in the Nordic countries". In Brentari, Diane (ed.). Sign Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 74–94. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511712203. ISBN 978-0521883702.
  2. ^ "Swedish Sign Language". Ethnologue. Retrieved 2017-09-06.