Recognition of sign languages

[Lorraine Leeson]

Irish Sign Language receives a mention in the Education Act (1988), but
this is not a recognition of the legal status of ISL per se, but an
acknowledgement of the fact that parents have the right to choose an ISL
based education for their Deaf children as an alternative to an
orally-driven education.

Apart from this, there is some de facto recognition of ISL, but our
constitution recognizes only Irish (Gaeilge) and English as the official
languages of the State and a referendum would be necessary to afford any
other language similar status here.

Lorraine

Dr. Lorraine Leeson
Director
Centre for Deaf Studies
83 Waterloo Lane
Ballsbridge
Dublin 4
Ireland


-----Original Message-----
From: For the discussion of linguistics and signed languages.
[mailto:SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA] On Behalf Of daisuke at YAHOO.COM
Sent: 12 June 2003 01:38
To: SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
Subject: Recognition of sign languages

Hello.

U.K. and Mexico recently recognized their sign languages as languages
for the
deaf, and my colleague in Japan wants to know the latest information
regarding
what sign languages have been legally recognized as languages for the
deaf or
as national sign languages.

He has found an article by Verena Krausneker (reported at the EUD
Celebratory
Conference in April, 2000) at the following site:

http://www.ea.nl/EUDmail/v.krausneker.htm

15 countries are included in the list, and 5 more are mentioned in the
text.

His questions are:

1) Is there any other SL that has been legally recognized as the
national sign
language?

2) Is there a more complete, recent list or report regarding SLs that
have been
legally recognized as national sign languages?  According to him, the
WFD site
doesn't give such information.

Thanks in advance.


Daisuke