Greek Sign Language
Encyclopedia
Greek Sign Language is the 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 the Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 deaf community. It has been legally recognised
Legal recognition of sign languages
The legal recognition of sign languages is one of the major concerns of the international Deaf community. There is no standard way in which such a recognition can be formally or legally extended; every country has its own interpretation...

 as the official language of the Deaf Community in Greece by Law 2817 in 2000.

The Greek Sign Language is estimated to be used by about 40,600 signers.

Greek SL formed in the 1950s when American Sign Language
American Sign Language
American Sign Language, or ASL, for a time also called Ameslan, is the dominant sign language of Deaf Americans, including deaf communities in the United States, in the English-speaking parts of Canada, and in some regions of Mexico...

 and French Sign Language
French Sign Language
French Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf in the nation of France. According to Ethnologue, it has 50,000 to 100,000 native signers....

came together, with admixture from indigenous sign.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK