International Day of Sign Languages

Sign language is a visual form of communication that uses hand gestures, body language, and facial expressions to convey meaning. Similar to spoken languages, and unlike general assumption, sign languages are not universal and vary from country to country. In fact, there are over 300 different sign languages in use around the world. Despite these variations sign languages share some common features : space is commonly used to convey information about distance and direction. Additionally, sign languages typically have their own grammar and syntax, which can be quite different from spoken languages. The United Nations recognizes  The importance of sign language and has made efforts to Promote the use of sign languages internationally . The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed September 23rd as International Day of Sign Languages to help raise awareness about sign language and the rights of deaf people. On this day, events are held worldwide to celebrate sign langua...

Join us on Tuesday, 23 September at the Palais des Nations for a vibrant celebration of the International Day of Sign Languages 2025 . Organized by UNOG in collaboration with the Permanent Missions of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, this in-person event is open to the public. External visitors must  register via Indico. Sign Language Pop-up Café :  Start the afternoon at the Salon Suisse between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. with tea, coffee and cookies, on the house! Even better: learn how to order your refreshments in sign language and practice your new skills right away. Official Opening & Interventions : The event will be inaugurated by Kira Kruglikova, Director of Administration and Focal Point for Disability Inclusion at UNOG, followed by interventions from the Permanent Missions to highlight the importance of sign language rights across the world . Come celebrate, connect, and discover The power of sign languages in making human rights a reality for all at UN GENEVA, ...

As the Australian Deaf community celebrate its National Week of Deaf People from 22 to 28 September to honour Deaf culture, language, and achievements; they partnered with several landmarks to shine in blue light. This is a global initiative showing solidarity with Deaf communities and reminds us that there are no human rights without sign language rights. Share your photos with us and join the movement for sign language rights everywhere!

ILLUMATIONS: Following the success of the first Shine a blue light on Sign Languages, the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) is continuing the Blue Light for Sign Languages this year, aiming to highlight the unity brought by the shared experience of national sign languages. This International Day of Sign Languages 2023 event aims to unite the world, its citizens, communities and societies through the blue light. We invite all public places, public landmarks and official buildings, Presidential houses, County buildings, City Halls, and others to be spotlighted in blue light on 23 September 2024. By highlighting the blue colour on their buildings and landmarks is a reaffirmation of our joint commitment to supporting national sign languages and showing solidarity with global deaf communities . Together, we can achieve human rights and a more equal society via the use of national sign languages in all areas of life. The WFD encourages its 135 Ordinary Members, national associations of d...

FORUM : “ Sign up for Sign Language Rights. ”. International Day of Sign Languages 2024 . According to the World Federation of the Deaf, there are more than 70 million deaf people worldwide. More than 80% of them live in developing countries. Collectively, they use more than 300 different sign languages As we approach the 20th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), adopted in December 2006, let us strive towards a better implementation of the CRPD at the national level through the linguistic human rights of deaf people. Sign up for sign language rights by working with your local and national associations to announce the achievement of a concrete goal for deaf communities today. Deaf communities, governments and civil society organisations continue their collective efforts - hand in hand - to foster, promote and recognize national sign languages as part of their countries’ vibrant and diverse linguistic landscapes. The Blue Light Challenge i...

The World Federation of the Deaf guiding mission is to strengthen and grow our global network of representative organisations of deaf people by: Strengthening the capacity of current National Associations of Deaf People Providing effective capacity building programmes for members, with a particular focus on the Global South Work with organisational members to promote intersectional work with diverse deaf communities Increase grant development and scope of implementation among our members Promote the participation of deaf youth in deaf organisations The 60 Country Project: Developing and Sustaining New National Organisations of Deaf People Ensure the participation of women, youth, and underrepresented communities in our work Aim to achieve equality and equal opportunities across all areas of life

  The WFD will continue to put deaf people on human rights and development agendas. The WFD is a credible source for all sign language and deaf rights data. - Develop deaf-led evidence-based advocacy tool. - Promote disaggregated data collection and monitoring on deaf people and sign languages. We continue to monitor and respond to emerging trends affecting deaf people WFD is visible and active in shaping policies and practices in emerging policy areas We will actively promote IWDP and IDSL as globally recognised celebrations.

The WFD continues to be the leading global authority for deaf people and sign languages. - The WFD has a robust presence at the UN and other important international forums Proactively promote the WFDs interpretation and analysis of human rights treaties as they pertain to deaf people Participate, with national and international partners, in UN Human Rights  Monitoring processes and post-review monitoring and implementation - Increase the number of deaf people on UN Treaty Bodies - Collaborating on tools and resources for national advocacy Ensuring the centering of deaf people in policies and practice Promoting best practices in economic, social and cultural and health policies for deaf people Ensuring deaf people are not left behind in humanitarian actions Addressing the impact of climate change and natural disasters on deaf communities

Sign languages are fundamental to the achievement of deaf people's human rights Promoting the legal recognition of national sign languages through training and advocacy at the national and international levels Advising policy and legislative makers on sign language Increasing the number of countries with sign language recognition Achieving National Sign Languages for All: By 2033, 25% of national populations can sign in their national sign languages Full recognition of deaf people/sign languages as a part of human diversity Implementing and achieving CRPD Articles 21 and 30 around the world Advocating for early childhood language acquisition and inclusive multilingual education policies WFD Views on Inclusive Education are Understood and Implemented by Governments Empowering Ordinary Members to actively participate in monitoring efforts.

  To carry out the Mission, we need a strong and sustainable organisation Build a Diverse Global Secretariat Strong, growing, and sustainable organisational structure and financial management Strengthen and utilise WFD sections and Regional Secretariats to promote our work Increase and strengthen partnerships and alliances at all levels Increase visibility of the WFD work in all levels and areas of work

The choice of September 23rd commemorates the date that the World Federation of the Deaf was established in 1951. This day marks the birth of an advocacy organisation, which has as one of its main goals, the preservation of sign languages and deaf culture as pre-requisites to the realisation of the human rights of deaf people. Sign languages are fully fledged natural languages, structurally distinct from the spoken languages. There is also an international sign language, which is used by deaf people in international meetings and informally when travelling and socializing. It is considered a pidgin form of sign language that is not as complex as natural sign languages and has a limited lexicon. The International Day of Sign Languages is an unique opportunity to support and protect the linguistic identity and cultural diversity of all deaf people and other sign language users.

  In an attempt to understand certain similarities across sign languages , some interesting suggestions have been made about the role of iconicity (transparent correspondence between form and meaning) in shaping sign language grammar . Such a possibility runs counter to the by now traditional view that grammatical structure and iconicity are mutually exclusive. This more traditional view assumed, with Saussure (1959), that the elements of language , to be language, must be arbitrary. Therefore, it was assumed to follow that whatever is iconic about sign language is not “ linguistic .” Nowadays, however, there is such an abundance of solid evidence that sign languages are real linguistic systems in every sense of the word, that it is possible to take a fresh look at the whole issue. Allowing for the possibility that iconicity contributes to grammatical structure in sign language opens the door to the possibility that general cognitive concepts – such as spatial relations among refe...

  For the International Day of Sign Languages 2022 ( September 23rd ), UN Geneva, in partnership with the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and others, hosted a high-level panel discussion under the theme "Sign Languages Unite Us!" at the Palais des Nations, featuring UN officials, WFD experts, and Member State representatives to promote awareness, linguistic diversity, and human rights for Deaf communities , including discussions on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)

  Current linguistic theory which hypothesizes that humans are genetically endowed with the fundamental underpinnings of language is supported by the claim that languages are similar to each other in significant ways. This view gains further support from the sign language findings reported in the previous sections. As we mentioned earlier, current theories are also based on the related observation that children acquire language automatically, including aspects of the system that do not seem directly retrievable from the input they receive. This section reviews phases of  The acquisition of sign language , to see whether this process has the hallmarks of automaticity and systematicity that are found in spoken language acquisition. If sign languages  represent the same cognitive system as spoken languages do, then they should be acquired in a similar way. If, on the other hand, the modality somehow prevents sign languages from belonging to the same cognitive system, the...

  It has been some forty years since serious investigation of natural sign languages began to show that these languages are bona fide linguistic systems , with structures and rules and the full range of expressive power that characterize spoken languages. Researchers have spent most of that time demonstrating, with increasing rigor and formality, the sometimes surprising similarities between languages in the two modalities, spoken and signed. Concomitantly, scholars in the related disciplines of language acquisition and neurolinguistics have been discovering significant similarities between spoken and signed languages in these domains as well. It is safe to say that the academic world is now convinced that sign languages are real languages in every sense of the term . If this were the whole story, however, there would be no need for a chapter on sign languages in this volume. Each sign language would be seen as a language like any other, English, Hungarian, Central Alaskan Yu...

  We begin by offering a sketch of the evidence that sign languages have grammatical structures comparable to those of spoken languages. First we examine the structure of the sentence (syntax) , and then we move to the structure of the smaller units of language , those that may be compared to the meaningless but identifiable sounds of speech (phonology) . We will end this section with a discussion of the structure of words (morphology) .

  In order to have sentences, one must have words, and words – at least in spoken language – are pronounced as a series of sounds. What about the sign of sign language? Does it have a level of substructure like the spoken word? Since spoken and signed languages are produced and perceived by different physical systems – oral / aural, and manual / visual – one might expect to find the least amount of similarity across the two modalities at this level of analysis. Yet, here, too, there is much common ground. In 1960, William Stokoe published a monograph in which he demonstrated that the words of American Sign Language are not holistic gestures, but, rather, are analyzable as a combination of three meaningless yet linguistically significant categories: handshapes, locations, and movements. That is, by changing some feature of any one of those three categories, themselves meaningless, one could change the meaning of the sign . For example, by changing only the configuration of the ha...

What is language, and how is it structured?  • Language - a system for combining symbols (such as words) so that an unlimited number of meaningful statements can be made for the purpose of communicating with others.   • Grammar - the system of rules governing the structure and use a of language. • Syntax - the system of rules for combining words and phrases to form grammatically correct sentences.  • Morphemes - the smallest units of meaning within a language. – Semantics - the rules for determining the meaning of words and sentences. • Phonemes - the basic units of sound in language.  • Pragmatics - aspects of language involving the practical ways of communicating with others, or the social “niceties” of language How are language and thought related?  Language and Cognition  • Cognitive universalism – theory that concepts are universal and influence the development of language.  • Jean Piaget believed that concepts precede and aid the developm...

  One of the fundamental properties of human language is that it can be used to create an unlimited number of utterances given a limited number of pieces. At the syntactic level, this property follows directly from a mathematical property of language called recursiveness. We’re all familiar with recursiveness (even if not with the term). It is found in language , and computer programs, and even in children’s stories, as in (1). In (1), the process or rule that creates a relative clause (here, the clauses beginning with that) has applied repeatedly to the noun phrases inside other relative clauses. This repeated application of the same rule to create more and more complex sentences is an example of recursiveness. The children’s story is amusing precisely because we all know that there is no theoretical limit to the application of this rule. Any speaker of English can add to the story by generating another relative clause at the beginning, as in (2). The only limitations on th...