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Adamorobe Sign Language
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  states Ghana
  region eastern Ghana, Adamorobe village
  signers 1,400
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Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) is an indigenous Sign Language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana . Its users are about 300 deaf and 900 hearing people (Nyst).

The Adamorobe community is notable for its unusually high incidence of hereditary deafness, estimated at 2% ot the total population (Nyst). In the past, this percentage is thought to have been as high as 60%. Deaf people are fully incorporated into the community. In fact, inhabitants of Adamorobe can't remember a time without deaf people in the village.

Under these circumstances, Adamorobe has developed an indigenous sign language, fully independent from the country's standard Ghanaian Sign Language (which is related to American Sign Language ). AdaSL shares signs and Prosodic Features with some other sign languages in the region, but it has been suggested these similarities are due to culturally shared gestures rather than a genetic relationship. Frishberg (1987) suggests that AdaSL may be related to the "gestural trade jargon used in the markets throughout West Africa". Adamorobe Sign Language thus provides an interesting domain for cross-linguistic sign language research.


FURTHER READING


References

  • Frishberg, Nancy. (1987) 'Ghanaian Sign Language'. In: Cleve, J. Van (ed) Gallaudet encyclopaedia of deaf people and deafness. NY: McGraw-Gill Book Company.

  • Nyst, Victoria (2003) 'The phonology of name signs: a comparison between the sign languages of Uganda, Mali, Adamorobe and The Netherlands'. In Baker et al. (ed.) ''Cross-linguistic perspectives in sign language research.'' Hamburg: Signum.

  • Nyst, Victoria (2004) 'Verbs of motion in Adamorobe Sign Language' (unpublished paper presented at ''Colloquium on African Languages & Linguistics 34'', Leiden, August 2004, and at ''Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 8'', University of Barcelone, September 2004).



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