Levantine Arabic Sign Language

Levantine Sign Language
Syro-Palestinian Sign Language
لغة الإشارة العربية الشرقية
Region	Levant/Bilad al-Sham
Native speakers	30,000 (2021)[1]
Language family	Arab sign-language family Iraqi–Levantine? Levantine Sign Language
Dialects	Jordanian Sign Language Palestinian Sign Language Syrian Sign Language Lebanese Sign Language
Language codes
ISO 639-3	jos (Jordanian Sign Language)
Glottolog	jord1238  Levantine Arabic SL

Levantine Arabic Sign Language is the sign language used by Deaf and hearing-impaired people of the area known as Bilad al-Sham or the Levant, comprising Jordan, Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon. Although there are significant differences in vocabulary between the four states, this is not much greater than regional differences within the states. Grammar is quite uniform and mutual intelligibility is high, indicating that they are dialects of a single language.^[2]

The language typically goes by the name of the country, as so:

• Jordanian SL: لغة الإشارة الأردنية, Lughat il-Ishārah il-Urduniyyah (LIU)
• Lebanese SL: لغة الإشارات اللبنانية, Lughat al-Ishārāt al-Lubnāniyyah (LIL)
• Palestinian SL: لغة الاشارات الفلسطينية, Lughat al-Ishārāt al-Filisṭīniyyah (LIF)
• Syrian SL: لغة الإشارة السورية, Lughat il-Ishārah il-Sūriyyah (LIS)

References

1. Levantine Sign Language at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. Hendriks 2008.

Bibliography

• Hendriks, Bernadet (2008). Jordanian Sign Language: Aspects of grammar from a cross-linguistic perspective (PDF). LOT. ISBN 978-90-78328-67-4.
• Richardson, Kristina (Winter 2017). "New Evidence for Early Ottoman Arabic and Turkish Sign Systems". Sign Language Studies. 17 (2): 172–192. doi:10.1353/sls.2017.0001. S2CID 44038104.