Region Denmark | ISO 639-3 dsl | |
Native speakers 5,000 in Denmark proper; (2007)
also in Greenland Language family ? French sign
Danish Sign Language family
Danish Sign Language Glottolog dani1246 (DTS proper)
dani1289 (DTS family) | ||
Signgram dissemination in danish sign language dts
Danish Sign Language (Danish: Dansk tegnsprog, DTS) is the sign language used in Denmark.
Contents
Coldplay yellow with danish sign language
Classification
Henri Wittmann (1991) assigned DSL to the French Sign Language family because of similarities in vocabulary. However, the founder of the first deaf school in Denmark, Peter Atke Castberg, was receptive to local sign language in 1807 and so may have introduced FSL signs to the local language rather than FSL itself.
Norwegian Sign Language is generally thought to be a descendant of DSL. However, it may well be a mixture of DSL and indigenous sign, parallel to the situation between Swedish Sign Language and Finnish Sign Language.
Icelandic Sign Language is closer; 37% of a set of analyzed signs (Aldersson 2006) were completely different in structure and a further 16% were similar but not the same. Faeroese and Greenlandic Sign are more clearly dialects of DSL.