Ukrainian Sign Language
| Ukrainian Sign Language | |
|---|---|
| Українська жестова мова Ukrayinska Zhestova Mova |
|
| Native to | Ukraine |
|
Native speakers
|
54,000 (2008) |
|
French Sign
|
|
| Official status | |
| Regulated by | Sign Language Research Laboratory at the Institute of Special Education of National Academy of Educational Sciences of Ukraine |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
| Glottolog | ukra1235 |
Ukrainian Sign Language (USL) (Ukrainian: Українська жестова мова (УЖМ)) is the sign language of the deaf community of Ukraine. Ukrainian Sign Language belongs to the family of French sign languages. Worldwide awareness of Ukrainian sign language rose sharply in 2014 after the release of a Ukrainian film The Tribe, where actors communicated in Ukrainian Sign Language with no spoken dialogue.
The teaching of Ukrainian Sign Language to deaf students began in the early 1800s, when a number of branches of the Vienna School for the Deaf were opened in Ukraine, namely the Institute for Deaf in Volyn in 1805 in Romaniv, then the Halychyna School for the Deaf in 1830 in Lviv and a few years later the Odesa School for the Deaf in 1843 in Odesa.
During the Soviet occupation of Ukraine, the development of teaching methods for Ukrainian sign language slowed down considerably, since the use of Ukrainian sign language in educational systems of the USSR was banned soon after the negative feedback given by Joseph Stalin to sign languages in his 1950 article Marxism and Problems of Linguistics. In it, Stalin called deaf people "anomalous human beings" and described gesture language as "not a language at all, but a surrogate".
The use of Ukrainian sign language in educating deaf people in Ukraine didn't get reintroduced until 2006. As of January 1, 2015 there were 39 preschools for deaf children in Ukraine teaching preschoolers (6 years or younger); there were 61 specialized secondary schools for children with hearing impairments teaching deaf pupils ages 6 through 18 (this includes both day-time schools and boarding schools). However, most schools emphasize oral proficiency in Ukrainian and do not encourage use of USL.
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