Malagasy Sign Language

Malagasy Sign Language
  • Madagascar Sign Language
    Tenin'ny Tanana Malagasy
Native toMadagascar
Language codes
ISO 639-3mzc
Glottologmada1271

The Malagasy Sign Language (Malagasy: Tenin'ny Tanana Malagasy, abbreviated TTN) is a sign language used for communication among hearing impaired people in Madagascar. An estimated 110,000 to 170,000 people (or 1% of the population of Madagascar) are deaf. Malagasy Sign Language is similar to Norwegian Sign Language because the first deaf school in Madagascar was founded in 1960 by the Malagasy Lutheran Church with the assistance of a number of Norwegians, including Norwegian teachers.[1] That said, a large number of signs in Malagasy Sign seem to be completely unrelated to their Norwegian Sign counterparts.[1] Seven deaf schools in Madagascar are sponsored by Evangelical Lutherans.[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. ^ a b Minoura, Nobukatsu (31 July 2014). "A Preliminary Comparative Study of Norwegian Sign Language and Malagasy Sign Language" (PDF). 東京外国語大学論集 [Area and Culture Studies]. 88: 91–116. ISSN 0493-4342. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 August 2022. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
  2. ^ "Ethnologue". Archived from the original on 2018-02-28. Retrieved 2018-02-27.