use of sign language in Jordan

[Bernadet Hendriks]

When I visited Quweisma school for the Deaf several years ago, there was certainly no sign language being used there, so this might be a recent development, but I think it is more likely that a rather ad hoc form of signed Arabic is meant here (which is often referred to in Jordan as Total Communication, as Dan mentioned). To my knowledge, the only school in Jordan in which experiments have been done with bilingualism using natural Jordanian Sign Language has been the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf. Even there, though, most teachers make up their own form of signed Arabic. In 2006 the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen, in co-operation with the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf produced a basic course in Jordanian Sign Language which is now being taught for those with the aspiration to become interpreters. Hopefully this course can in the future also be used to train teachers of the Deaf in using Jordanian Sign Language. This is, however, the first course of its kind. Sign language courses in Jordan have thus far mainly focused on teaching vocabulary, which means most teachers are not aware of the fact that Jordanian Sign Language has a grammar that is completely different to the grammar of Arabic and that speaking Arabic and signing grammatically at the same time is not possible. However, if anyone knows of schools which do use natural Jordanian Sign Language, I would love to hear...

Greetings,

Bernadet



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