Nepalese Sign Language

Nepali Sign Language
Signed in	Ecuador
Native signers	5,740  (2001 census)
Language family	Indo-Pakistani Sign Language? language isolate?
Language codes
ISO 639-3	nsp

Nepali Sign Language is the main deaf sign language of Nepal.

Classification

Wittmann (1991)^[1] posits that ESL is a language isolate (a 'prototype' sign language), though one developed through stimulus diffusion from an existing sign language, likely Indo-Pakistani Sign Language or the systems that underlay it.

Woodward (1993)^[2] compared sign-language varieties in India, Pakistan and Nepal and found cognate rates of 62–71%. He concluded these are separate languages of the same family.

See also

Local indigenous sign languages in Nepal are Jhankot Sign Language, Jumla Sign Language, and Ghandruk Sign Language.

References

1. ^ Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 10:1.215–88.[1]
2. ^ Quoted in Sign Languages, CUP 2010