Indonesian Sign Language (

Indonesian Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to: * Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia ** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago ** Indonesian ...

: ''Bahasa Isyarat Indonesia'', BISINDO) is any of several related

deaf 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. Sig ...

s of

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

, at least on the island of

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

. It is based on

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that i ...

, with local admixture in different cities. Although presented as a coherent language when advocating for recognition by the Indonesian government and use in education, the varieties used in different cities may not be mutually intelligible. Specifically, the only study to have investigated this, Isma (2012),Silva Tenrisara Pertiwi Isma, 2012, "Signing Varieties in Jakarta and Yogyakart

found that the sign languages of

Jakarta Jakarta (; , Betawi language, Betawi: ''Jakartè''), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (; ''DKI Jakarta'') and formerly known as Batavia, Dutch East Indies, Batavia until 1949, is the capital and largest city of Indonesia and ...

and

Yogyakarta Yogyakarta is the capital city of the Special Region of Yogyakarta in Indonesia, in the south-central part of the island of Java. As the only Indonesian royal city still ruled by Hamengkubuwono, a monarchy, Yogyakarta is regarded as an importan ...

are related but distinct languages, that they remain 65% lexically cognate but are grammatically distinct and apparently diverging. They are different enough that Isma's consultants in Hong Kong resorted to

Hong Kong Sign Language Hong Kong Sign Language (), abbreviated as HKSL, is the deaf sign language of Hong Kong and Macau. It derived from the southern dialect of Chinese Sign Language, but is now an independent, mutually unintelligible language. Origins The origin ...

to communicate with each other. Word order in Yogyakarta tends to be verb-final ( SOV), whereas in Jakarta it tends to be verb-medial ( SVO) when either noun phrase could be subject or object, and free otherwise. The varieties in other cities were not investigated. Rather than sign language, education currently uses a form of manually-coded Indonesian known as '' Sistem Isyarat Bahasa Indonesia'' (SIBI).

References

{{sign language navigation Languages of Indonesia American Sign Language family Sign languages of Indonesia

See also

References