Armenian Sign Language, also known as Caucasian Sign Language, is the indigenous sign language

Sign language

A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...

 of Armenia

Armenia

Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...

. It is not directly related to the sign languages of Europe, though it may have historical connections to monastic sign language

Monastic sign language

Monastic sign languages have been used in Europe from at least the 10th century by Christian monks, and some, such as Cistercian and Trappist sign, are still in use today—not only in Europe but also in Japan, China and the USA...

. It developed under marriage speech taboos similar to those operating in Aboriginal Australia (see Aboriginal Australian sign languages). It is not clear if it is used by the deaf community, or if they have their own sign language.

Classification

Wittmann (1991) posits that ArSL is a language isolate

Language isolate

A language isolate, in the absolute sense, is a natural language with no demonstrable genealogical relationship with other languages; that is, one that has not been demonstrated to descend from an ancestor common with any other language. They are in effect language families consisting of a single...

(a 'prototype' sign language).