| Kenyan Sign Language |
Article Index for Kenyan |
Website Links For Kenyan |
Information AboutKenyan Sign Language |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT KENYAN SIGN LANGUAGE | |
| sign languages | |
| languages of kenya | |
Kenyan Sign Language is the language of the Deaf Community in Kenya, used throughout the country by a large number of the country's estimated Deaf population of 200,000. There are some dialect differences between Kisumu (western Kenya) and Mombasa (eastern Kenya). It may be related to Sign Language s in neighboring Uganda and Tanzania , though these sign languages are reported to be mutually unintelligible with KSL. As well as Kenyan Sign Language, a number of other languages have been used in Kenya by foreign educators: and even Korean Sign Language ( Ethnologue report ). It is probable that students in these schools use a form of KSL regardless. A Manual Alphabet exists. STATUS AND RECOGNITION KSL currently has no legal status, but there is a proposal that Kenyan Sign Language (KSL) and Braille should be recognized in the country's new Constitution as national and official Languages alongside English and Kiswahili . Interpreters are rarely available, and usually unqualified. A Kenyan Sign Language dictionary was published in 1991 . KSL is not generally used in the classrooms of Kenya's 35 residential Boarding School s for deaf students, despite it being their main language, and reportedly literacy in English and Kiswahili is very low among the deaf community. Since the first deaf schools were established in the 1960s , the teaching staff rarely (if ever) included a deaf person, until a government program in the 1990s (spearheaded by the Kenya National Association of the Deaf) saw two deaf individuals trained and employed as teachers. However, the program is now defunct. SIGN LANGUAGE ORGANISATIONS The Kenya National Association Of The Deaf (KNAD) is a national Non-governmental Organisation formed and managed by Deaf people. It was established in 1986 and registered in 1987 under the Societies Act; KNAD is also an ordinary member of the World Federation Of The Deaf . REFERENCES
EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|