Plains Indian Sign Language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Plains Indian Sign Language
Signed in:	USA and Canada
Total signers:	Few
Language family:	unknown
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	sgn
ISO 639-3:	psd
sign language — list of sign languages — legal recognition

Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL) is a sign language formerly used as an auxiliary interlanguage between Native Americans of the Great Plains of the United States of America and Canada.

In 1885, it was estimated that there were over 110,000 “sign-talking Indians”, including Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Sioux and Arapahoe.^[1] By the 1960s, there remained a “very small percentage of this number”.^[1] There are few PISL signers alive today.

[edit] References

1. ^ ^{a b} Tomkins, William: Indian sign language. [Republication of "Universal Indian Sign Language of the Plains Indians of North America" 5th ed. 1931]. New York : Dover Publications 1969. (p. 7)

[edit] Further reading

• Newell, Leonard E. (1981). A stratificational description of Plains Indian Sign Language. Forum Linguisticum 5: 189-212.

[edit] External links

• "PISL"
• Ethnologue report for language code:psd
• "Indian" Sign Language Dictionary
• "Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes," First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-1880, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1881, pages 263-552