Northern Ireland Sign Language | |
Nativename: | NISL Teanga Chomharthaíochta Thuaisceart Éireann |
Region: | Northern Ireland |
Speakers: | "BSL" is the native or preferred language of 3,500 in Northern Ireland |
Date: | 2007 |
Familycolor: | sign |
Fam1: | BANZSL Family. Emerging from British, Irish, and American Sign. |
Isoexception: | dialect |
Glotto: | none |
Northern Ireland Sign language (NISL;) is a sign language used mainly by deaf people in Northern Ireland.
NISL is described as being related to Irish Sign Language (ISL) at the syntactic level while the lexicon is based on British Sign Language (BSL)[1] and American Sign Language (ASL).
A number of practitioners see Northern Ireland Sign Language as a distinct and separate language from both BSL and ISL though "many 'Anglo-Irish' Northern Irish signers argue against the use of the acronym NISL and believe that while their variety is distinct, it is still a part of British Sign Language."[1]
the British Government recognises only British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language as the official sign languages used in Northern Ireland.[2] [3]