page_title: Fingerspelling
section_title: Research
hierarchical_section_title: Fingerspelling / Research
caption_attribution_description: English: Relationships between the manual alphabets of sign languages, based on similarities found in an available dataset of 76 manual alphabets (MAs), both current and defunct manual alphabets.
context_page_description: Fingerspelling is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. These manual alphabets, have often been used in deaf education, and have subsequently been adopted as a distinct part of a number of sign languages; there are about forty manual alphabets around the world. Historically, manual alphabets have had a number of additional applications—including use as ciphers, as mnemonics, and in silent religious settings.
context_section_description: Yoel (2009) demonstrated that American Sign Language is influencing the lexicon and grammar of Maritime Sign Language in various ways, including the fact that the original BANZSL two-handed manual alphabet is no longer used in the Maritimes and has been replaced by the one-handed American manual alphabet, which has been influencing lexicalisation. Although all participants in her survey had learnt and could still produce the BANSZL fingerspelling, they had difficulty doing so, and all participants indicated that it had been a long time since they last used it.
  Power et al. (2020) conducted a large-scale data study into the evolution and contemporary character of 76 current and defunct manual alphabets (MAs) of sign languages, postulating the existence of eight groups: a Afghan–Jordanian Group, an Austrian-origin Group (with a Danish Subgroup), a British-origin Group, a French-origin Group, a Polish Group, a Russian Group, a Spanish Group, and a Swedish Group. Notably, several defunct versions of German, Austrian, Hungarian and Danish manual alphabets were part of the Austrian-origin group, while the current MAs of these sign languages are closely related to the French, American, International Sign and other MAs in the French-origin Group. Latvian Sign Language's MA dangled somewhere between the Polish and Russian Groups, Finnish Sign Language (which belongs to the Swedish Sign Language family) had a French-origin MA, while Indo-Pakistani Sign Language (whose lexicon and grammar have independent origins) currently used a two-handed manual alphabet of British origin.
caption: Relationships between the manual alphabets of sign languages
exif: {}