French Sign Language

French Sign Language
LSF Langue des Signes Française Französische Gebärdensprache Lingua dei Segni Francese Sign Gallica Lingua
LSF in French manual alphabet
Native to	France, Switzerland
Native speakers	100,000 (2014)
Language family	Old French Sign French Sign Language
Dialects	Marseille Sign Language See also French Sign Language family
Language codes
ISO 639-3	fsl – inclusive code Individual code: ssr – Swiss French SL
Glottolog	fren1243  French Sign Language swis1241  Swiss-French Sign Language

French Sign Language (Template:Lang-fr, LSF) is the sign language of the deaf in France and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. According to Ethnologue, it has 100,000 native signers.

French Sign Language is related and partially ancestral to Dutch Sign Language (NGT), German Sign Language (DGS), Flemish Sign Language (VGT), Belgian-French Sign Language (LSFB), Irish Sign Language (ISL), American Sign Language (ASL), Quebec (also known as French Canadian) Sign Language (LSQ), Brazilian Sign Language (BSL) and Russian Sign Language (RSL).

History

French Sign Language is frequently, though mistakenly, attributed to the work of Charles Michel de l'Épée (l'abbé de l'Épée). In fact, he is said to have discovered the already existing language by total accident; having ducked into a nearby house to escape the rain, he fell upon a pair of deaf twin sisters and was struck by the richness and complexity of the language that they used to communicate among themselves and the deaf Parisian community. The abbé set himself to learning the language, now known as Old French Sign Language, and eventually he established a free school for the deaf. At this school, he developed a system he called "methodical signs", to teach his students how to read and write. The abbé was eventually able to make public demonstrations (1771–1774) of his system, demonstrations that attracted educators and celebrities from all over the continent and that popularised the idea that the deaf could be educated, especially by gesture.

The methodical signs he created were a mixture of sign language words he had learned with some grammatical terms he invented. The resulting combination, an artificial language, was over-complicated and completely unusable by his students. For example, where his system would elaborately construct the word "u

The French manual alphabet is used both to distinguish signs of LSF and to incorporate French words while signing.

See also

• Old French Sign Language
• Signed French
• French Sign Language Academy
• American Sign Language, possibly a descendant of LSF

External links

• The LSF wikibook (in French)