The Slovak Sign Language is the

sign language Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with non-manual markers. Sign ...

of the

deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

community in

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the ...

. It belongs to the French sign-language family. Bickford (2005) found that Slovak, Czech, and Hungarian Sign formed a cluster with Romanian, Bulgarian, and Polish Sign.Bickford, 2005
''The Signed Languages of Eastern Europe''
/ref> Despite the similarity of oral Slovak and Czech, SSL is not particularly close to

Czech Sign Language Czech Sign Language is the sign language of the deaf community in the Czech Republic. It presumably emerged around the time of the first deaf school in Bohemia (1786). It belongs to the French sign-language family and is partially intelligible w ...

References

French Sign Language family Languages of Slovakia {{sign-lang-stub