Talk:Indo-Pakistani Sign Language

one language or two?

Woodward 1993 is quoted in Sign Languages (CUP 2010): he "compared sign language varieties in India, Pakistan and Nepal with results ranging from 62–71 percent cognates. He finds that these varieties are separate languages but belong to the same language family."

However, Zeshan (2000) claims they are the same language. Do we have any way to verify? — kwami (talk) 06:13, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I've talked with several people who are familiar with sign languages in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. There are a significant number of people who disagree with Zeshan, particularly with regard to Nepal, Kolkata, and southern India. On the other hand, I talked to Zeshan about this briefly once, and she noted that deaf people she's familiar with in India are able to communicate with each other in many different places. Now, of course, that's true to some extent (much more so than with spoken languages) even when two deaf people don't share a common language, especially if their languages are related and they're well-travelled. But, Zeshan is familiar with that phenomenon too, and familiar with many different sign languages. So, I assume she feels there is substantially less variation within south Asia than she has found between other clearly-distinct sign languages, and she's offered some evidence to support that conclusion.

As for published sources, there is one other we could cite, here: [1]. From the abstract, it appears to support Zeshan's position, but it only looks at major cities. What people have been telling me is that there is considerably more variation in smaller cities, rural areas, and even in major cities among lower classes. Also, even Sibaji Panda, a Deaf Indian linguist who basically supports Zeshan's position, has noted that there is a village sign language in Alipur (near Bengaluru) which is different from IPSL, and he published that in a book that Zeshan edited. So, even Zeshan and Panda acknowledge some diversity of languages in the subcontinent.

I think the best thing we can do at the moment is cite the few published sources, note that there is disagreement on whether IPSL is one language or several, and wait to see what other information gets published. (Sorry, I don't have time at the moment to work this info into the article; I may come back later and do it, but in the meantime, someone else can.) I have encouraged people who have personal knowledge of the language communities there to do careful studies and publish their results, so as to get some actual data out in the open where it can be examined carefully. AlbertBickford (talk) 00:54, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

@AlbertBickford: Thanks for all the detail! We're really not concerned about village sign languages. AFAIK, no-one claims they're dialects of IPSL. That's why we have a separate article for Alipur Sign Language, for example. I wouldn't be surprised if there are quite a few of those, and in some places it might simply be a case of home sign, where IPSL hasn't yet reached. I'm thinking more of claims that Pakistani SL is a separate language from Indian–Bengali SL. Is that like pretending Hindi and Urdu are different languages, or would you really need a translator? — kwami (talk) 07:31, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: I don't know as far as Pakistan vs. India (Delhi), but some people I've talked to claim that the differences within India are significant enough that there would be very little comprehension of video materials from other parts of the country, and in some cases even face-to-face communication would not succeed. But, again, these claims are made privately and haven't been backed up by published data in peer-reviewed sources yet, so there's not a lot we can rely on in the article. AlbertBickford (talk) 21:44, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

We'd be lucky to get any published data, let alone peer-reviewed. Seems to be a similar situation to Indonesian Sign Language. — kwami (talk) 22:13, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

There has been a recent development on this issue, a paper published in Sign Language Studies by Johnson and Johnson claiming that the sign language varieties in Kolkata and Bangladesh are distinct from IPSL, and probably also from each other. See [[2]. There is an [ISO 639-3 request] by the authors of the article to establish a separate code for West Bengal Sign Language. This should be acted on in January 2017, so by that time we should be able to add something new. AlbertBickford (talk) 00:40, 24 October 2016 (UTC) I just updated the article to reflect the newer information. AlbertBickford (talk) 01:19, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Dead links

Miles (2001) is now a dead link. I can't find it hosted anywhere else, but maybe someone else can?Loztron (talk) 10:19, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

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Dil ka Rishta

Hello,

The Bollywood film "Dil ka Rishta" is another example of Indo-Pakistani Sign Language in film in the scenes at the Deaf school.

I was wondering if the Deaf community in India had opinions on this, too. I would wonder about the whole issue of cultural appropriation of the language on the part of the hearing people with stars of the show (Hearing actors and actresses) are using the language and one poses as a teacher of the Deaf there.

I am certainly unqualified to comment on this matter. If an analogous situation occurred in Western cinema, the Deaf community would view this as appropriation as the majority culture did not used qualified Deaf actors or actresses in the movie. Based on what I have heard in North America as a hearing, Canadian student of ASL, I wonder if the analogous situation is present there.

Please inform this discussion for this article.

Thanks!

Munish Mbhup (talk) 00:14, 25 April 2021 (UTC)