Cambodian Sign Language (CBDSL) is an indigenous
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 ...
of
Cambodia
Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
.
History
Little is known of the language situation prior to the first Cambodian school for the deaf being established in the capital of Phnom Penh in 1997. Although the language of education is
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 ...
, modified to follow
Khmer word order, the Deaf community of Phnom Penh has developed their language with the support of the Maryknoll Deaf Development Programme.
Classification
CBDSL shares about 40% of basic vocabulary with
Modern Thai Sign Language
Thai Sign Language (TSL; ), or Modern Standard Thai Sign Language (MSTSL), is the national sign language of Thailand's deaf community and is used in most parts of the country by the 20 percent of the estimated 56,000 pre-linguistically deaf peopl ...
(MTSL). What intelligibility there is with American Sign Language, apart from iconic elements, is due to vocabulary that is shared among CBDSL, MTSL and ASL. No connection with other languages of neighboring countries has been noted.
[Woodward, Bradford, Sokchea & Samath (2015) Cambodian Sign Language. In Jepsen et al. (eds.) ''Sign Languages of the World: A Comparative Handbook'', pp. 159–176. De Gruyter Mouton and Ishara Press.]
References
Relevant publications
*
* Murray, Joseph J, Erin Moriarty, Mara Green, Kristin Snoddon, and Annelies Kusters. “Ideology, Authority, and Power.” In ''Sign Language Ideologies in Practice'', 12:333–52. Germany: De Gruyter, Inc, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501510090-017.
*
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Sign language isolates
Language isolates of Asia
Languages of Cambodia