Wikipedia's list of sign languages: who?

[Albert Bickford]

Another nameI have read is "Inuk Sign Language", which appears in Jamie MacDougall's paper available at http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/rs/rep-rap/2000/rr00_17/index.html.  In another paper with a very similar title he has used the name "Inuit Sign Language", see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3711/is_/ai_n8941972.  So, I suspect they all refer to the same language, but I haven't read the articles in detail to determine that. Further, even if MacDougall uses them interchangeably, someone else might be using the terms to refer to two different sign languages, or there may be more variation from place to place than has been documented yet.

Incidentally, "Inuk" and "Inuit" are autonyms used in the spoken languages of the area (sometimes called "Eskimo" languages but this term is offensive to some people), and are cognate terms.  "Inuktitut" is from the same language as "Inuk" and is a derived term, but I don't know exactly what either means (e.g. maybe noun vs. adjective, or people vs. language). 

It would be good to settle once and for all how many indigenous sign languages there are among the Inuit/Inuk/etc.  At one point, the Ethnologue actually had an entry for "Eskimo Sign Language" but took it out in the mid-1990s because we couldn't at that time verify the existence of the language.  Now the evidence has appeared for one or possibly more indigenous sign languages in the American Arctic.  Once the situation becomes clear, I would suggest that someone prepare a proposal for the ISO 639-3 standard to establish one or more three-letter identifying codes, which can then be used to help avoid this sort of confusion.  I'd be happy to help if you're interested, Joke.

Albert Bickford
SIL International

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Schuit, J.M. 
  To: slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 7:09 AM
  Subject: [SLLING-L] Wikipedia's list of sign languages: who?


  Hello all,

   

  Recently I googled an Inuktitut term that was supposed to refer to sign language, and Google gave me directions to a Wikipedia article with a List of Sign Languages. Does anyone know who wrote this? It's for this reason:

  To my amazement, this article listed Inuit Sign Language as well as Inuktitut Sign Language, each with a different Inuktitut translation (or I guess it is an Inuktitut translation as I do not know the language). As I am working on a description of (parts of) the Inuit Sign Language used in Canada, I would be interested to know to which languages the labels Inuit SL and Inuktitut SL apply, and where the Inuktitut translation comes from. Does anyone on the SLLing List know who wrote this Wikipedia article? I would like to ask him/her where the information about these two languages came from, as I had not come across it before.

  This is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sign_languages

   

  I hope anyone can inform me!

  Best,

   

  Joke Schuit

  Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication

  Universiteit van Amsterdam

  Spuistraat 210

  1012VT Amsterdam

   

   



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