Samiksha Jaiswal (Editor)

Chatino Sign Language

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Native to
  
Mexico

Ethnicity
  
Chatino

ISO 639-3
  
None (mis)

Region
  
Oaxaca

Language family
  
village sign

Native speakers
  
11 deaf in San Juan Quiahije (2015 survey) also used by some hearing people

San Juan Quiahije Chatino Sign Language is an emerging village sign language of the indigenous Chatino villages of San Juan Quiahije and Cieneguilla in Oaxaca, Mexico, used by both the deaf and some of the hearing population. It is apparently unrelated to Mexican Sign Language. As of 2014, there is a National Science Foundation-funded study and also a National Institutes of Health-funded study of the development of this language.

Non-signing hearing people in the village use various gestures for negation when speaking, and these are retained in Chatino Sign Language. The variability of these signs may be due to the small size of the deaf population in comparison to the number of hearing people who use them as co-speech gestures.

References

Chatino Sign Language Wikipedia