Turkish Sign Language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Turkish Sign Language
Türk İşaret Dili
Native toTurkey, Northern Cyprus
Signers250,000 (2021)[1]
Early form
Possibly from Ottoman Sign Language
Language codes
ISO 639-3tsm
Glottologturk1288

Turkish Sign Language (Turkish: Türk İşaret Dili, TİD) is the language used by the deaf community in Turkey. As with other sign languages, TİD has a unique grammar that is different from the oral languages used in the region.

TİD uses a two-handed manual alphabet which is very different from the two-handed alphabets used in the BANZSL sign languages. It also uses the tongue in certain phrases.

Grammar[edit]

There is little published information on Turkish Sign Language. Turkish Sign Language exhibits a subject-object-verb order (SOV). There is a rich set of modal verbs which appear in a clause-final position.[2]

Signing communities[edit]

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute, there are a total of 89,000 people (54,000 male, 35,000 female) with hearing impairment and 55,000 people (35,000 male, 21,000 female) with speaking disability living in Turkey, based on 2000 census data.[3]

History[edit]

TİD is dissimilar from European sign languages. There was a court sign language of the Ottoman Empire, which reached its height in the 16th century and 17th centuries and lasted at least until the early 20th.[4] However, there is no record of the signs themselves and no evidence the language was ancestral to modern Turkish Sign Language.[5]

Deaf schools were established in 1902, and until 1953 used TİD alongside the Turkish spoken and written language in education.[6] Since 1953 Turkey has adopted an oralist approach to deaf education.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Turkish Sign Language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed access icon
  2. ^ Serpil Karabüklü, Fabian Bross, Ronnie B. Wilbur & Daniel Hole: Modal signs and scope relations in TİD. FEAST, 2, 82-92. DOI: 10.31009/FEAST.i2.07
  3. ^ Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu, Nüfus, Konut ve Demografi Verileri 2000
  4. ^ Miles, M. (2000). Signing in the Seraglio: Mutes, dwarfs and gestures at the Ottoman Court 1500-1700, Disability & Society, Vol. 15, No. 1, 115-134
  5. ^ Turkish Sign Language (TİD) General Info Archived 2012-04-15 at the Wayback Machine, Dr. Aslı Özyürek, Koç University website, accessed 2011-10-06
  6. ^ Deringil, S. (2002). İktidarın Sembolleri ve İdeoloji: II. Abdülhamid Dönemi (1876–1909), YKY, İstanbul, 249.

External links[edit]