Providence Island Sign Language (also known as "Providencia Sign Language") is the sign language used by the deaf community on the small island community of Providence Island in the Western Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

, off the coast of Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

 but belonging to Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

. The island is about 15 square miles (38.8 km²) and the total population is about 2,500, of which a large number are deaf.

It is believed that the sign language emerged in the late 19th or early 20th century. Brief sociological studies have suggested that deaf people on the island are not regarded as inferior in the areas of marriage, mental ability, occupations, and social integration.

External links

• Providence Island Sign Language by William Washabaugh (1991)
• Ethnologue entry