Henniker Sign Language was a village sign language of 19th-century Henniker, New Hampshire and surrounding villages in the US. It was one of the three local languages which formed the basis of

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 ...

. Although the number of students from Henniker were fewer than speakers of the more famous Martha's Vineyard Sign Language, deafness in Henniker was genetically dominant, and Henniker SL was therefore likely to have been better developed than MVSL.

References

*Lane, Pillard, & French, "Origins of the American Deaf-World: Assimilating and Differentiating Societies and Their Relation to Genetic Patterning". In Emmorey & Lane, eds, ''The Signs of Language Revisited'', 2000 {{Sign language Village sign languages Sign languages of the United States Extinct languages of North America Extinct sign languages Language isolates of North America Disability in New Hampshire

See also

References