Native to Burma Glottolog None | ISO 639-3 None (mis) | |
Language family ASL?
Burmese Sign Language Dialects Rangoon (Yangon)
Mandalay | ||
There are three schools for the deaf in Burma, the Mary Chapman School for the Deaf in Yangon (est. 1904), the School for the Deaf, Mandalay (est. 1964), and the Immanuel School for the Deaf in Kalay (est. 2005). However, oral Burmese is the language of instruction, at least in Yangon, with sign used to support it. The sign language used in Yangon and Mandalay is different, but it's not clear if they are one language or two. Influences on the language(s) include ASL in all schools, as well as Korean Sign Language, Australian Sign Language, Thai Sign Language, and possibly a local substratum. A government project was set up in 2010 to establish a national sign language with the aid of the Japanese Federation of the Deaf.
Two manual alphabets are in use in Yangon: The American manual alphabet, which may or may not be well known, and a Burmese-based alphabet taught in the 1970s and 1980s.