Native to Zimbabwe Official language in Zimbabwe | Dialects Masvingo School Sign ISO 639-3 zib | |
Native speakers 280,000 deaf members of the Zimbabwe National Association of the Deaf (2008) Language family several Deaf-community sign languages of unknown origin | ||
Several Zimbabwean sign languages developed independently among deaf students in different Zimbabwean schools for the deaf starting in the 1940s. It is not clear how many languages they are, as little research has been done; Masvingo School Sign is known to be different from that of other schools, but each school apparently has a separate sign language, and these are different from the community language or languages used outside of the schools. American Sign Language is reported to be used, but it is not clear to what extent. "Sign language", without further clarification, became one of Zimbabwe's official national languages with the Constitution of 2013.
References
Zimbabwean sign languages Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA