Jamaican Country Sign Language, also Country Sign, or Konchri Sain (KS) in

Jamaican Patois Jamaican Patois (; locally rendered Patwah and called Jamaican Creole by linguists) is an English-based creole language with West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines West ...

, is an indigenous

village sign language A village sign language, or village sign, also known as a shared sign language, is a local indigenous sign language used by both deaf and hearing in an area with a high incidence of congenital deafness. Meir ''et al.'' define a village sign langua ...

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispan ...

. It is used by a small number of Deaf and hearing Jamaicans, spread over several communities in the rural south-western parish of St. Elizabeth. The introduction of formal education for the St. Elizabeth deaf in 1975 by American Mennonite missionaries introduced two additional signed systems which have negatively affected KS:

Signed English Manually-Coded English (MCE) is a type of sign system that follows direct spoken English. The different codes of MCE vary in the levels of directness in following spoken English grammar. There may also be a combination with other visual clues, su ...

and

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 of America and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is express ...

. School officials strongly discouraged the use of the language inside and outside the classroom, resulting in a significant reduction in the number of fluent KS signers and a dramatic decline in the language's prestige. Thus, by 1985, KS was used primarily by elderly monolingual Deaf community members, while other community members used

Jamaican Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) developed in the United States and Canada, but has spread around the world. Local varieties have developed in many countries, but there is little research on which should be considered dialects of ASL (such as Bolivia ...

, a

dialect The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena: One usage refers to a variety of a language that ...

. In 2007 it was estimated that the language would become extinct in the next twenty to thirty years, if deliberate effort was not taken to save it by means of an effective language planning strategy. The

University of the West Indies The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 17 English-speaking countries and territories in t ...

in conjunction with the

University of Central London A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase ''universitas magistrorum et scholarium'', which ro ...

had already begun working on a

language documentation Language documentation (also: documentary linguistics) is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given sp ...

project for the language. A 2011 sociolinguistic survey reported that there were deaf adult KS signers on the island in 2009.Parks, Epley, et al., (2011:10)

Notes

References

*Cumberbatch, Keren., Adone, Dany., et al. (2012)
''Colour signs in two indigenous sign languages.''
In "Sign Languages in Village Communities: Subtitle: Anthropological and Linguistic Insights," edited by Connie De Vos and

Ulrike Zeshan Ulrike Zeshan is a German-born linguist and academic specializing in the linguistics of signed languages. She is Professor of Sign Language Linguistics at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. Biography Zeshan obtained an MA at the University ...

, pp. 53–86. (Series Title: Sign Language Typology 4). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Available (in part) online: google books. *Cumberbatch, Keren., (2012)
"Sociolinguistic sketch of Konchri Sain."
In ''Sign Languages in Village Communities: Subtitle: Anthropological and Linguistic Insights'', edited by Connie De Vos and Ulrike Zeshan, pp. 387–394. (Series Title: Sign Language Typology 4). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. *Parks, Elizabeth., Epley, Christina., et al. (2011)
''A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Jamaican Deaf Community.''
SIL International. SIL Electronic Survey. * Zeshan, Ulrike. (2007). ''The ethics of documenting sign languages in village communities.'' In Peter K. Austin, Oliver Bond & David Nathan (eds
''Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory.''
London: SOAS. pp. 269–279. *Dolman, D., (1986)

In "Sign Language Studies." no 52. pp 235–242. *Dolman, D., (1985).
"The Language of St. Elizabeth's Deaf Community."
In ''Jamaica Journal.'' 18(4). pp 10–15.

External links

Ethnologue Entry on Konchri Sain

Map of St. Elizabeth Parish

The Jamaica Association for the Deaf's KS page
{{sign language navigation Sign language isolates Endangered sign language isolates Sign languages of Jamaica Village sign languages