| Also Known As: El Lenguaje Mexicano De Las Manos,La Lengua Manual Mexicana,Lenguaje de Signos Mexicano,Lenguaje de las Manos,Lenguaje Manual Mexicana,LSM
Description:
Mexican Sign Language (“lengua de señas mexicana” or LSM, also known by several other names), is the language of the Deaf community in the urban regions of Mexico. It is the preferred language of 87,000 to 100,000 signers (1986 T. C. Smith-Stark), making it larger than many whole families of indigenous languages in the country.
Core signing populations are found in Mexico City, followed by Guadalajara and Monterrey, with a number of smaller cities containing signing communities. Some regional variation is found (80%-90% lexical similarity across the country according to Faurot et al. 2001).
Variation is high between age groups and people of different religious backgrounds.
LSM is quite distinct from Spanish, with completely different verb inflections, different preferences for word order and little use of the verb to be. However, there is extensive use of initialised signs with one study finding 37% of a 100-word list are initialised, compared to 14% for American Sign Language (Faurot et al. 2001). The same authors suggest that the Deaf community's comprehension of the Spanish language is very low.
The term "Signed Spanish” refers to signing that uses LSM signs (lexicon) in a..... full article at Wikipedia |
