Survival of the fittest language?

A while ago I already wrote about the difference between Adamorobe sign language (AdaSL), Ghanaian sign language (GSL) and the general Ghanaian ‘gestures’. That post (Sign scala in Ghana) was more about Ghana in general. But what about Adamorobe specifically? How and when are the different sign languages present?

The daily language in the village is – for the deaf amongst each other, and the deaf with the hearing – AdaSL. A few of the hearing who don’t master it well, use the general gestures. The deaf priest from Accra who comes to do services for the deaf, however, uses GSL. Signing songs in GSL seems to be enjoyed by most and I’m persistently pushed to join them, even though it often does not quite resemble the original. But the (for them non-understandable) sermon in GSL is found very boring and a lot of the deaf start falling asleep, which leads to sneering of their neighbour, whom him- or herself falls asleep 5 minutes later. I often suggested the priest to use the deaf’s own language, but he’s struggling with the conversion, even though he knows quite a bit of AdaSL.

The influence of GSL has been around for tens of years. The current priest visits since 10 years, but before that another deaf man gave the deaf religious education and some reading and writing lessons. As a result of that, the deaf adults know some GSL-signs and (as a consequence?) borrowed GSL-signs appear once in a while, like the one for ‘name’. The most clear examples of ‘borrowing’ from GSL are the name signs, based on finger spelling, of which the hand forms are often made wrongly, because the deaf are illiterate which makes them poor finger spellers. It’s a fact that name signs in AdaSL are considered as being teasing and even demeaning, because they’re quite explicitly based on how the person looks or moves; while those based on GSL are considered to be more neutral. Both versions of the name signs are in used.

These two sign languages do not seem to be related in any way and are tremendously different. GSL generally gives a quite ‘calm’ impression, it’s a language with few mouth movements and barely any facial expressions, a lot of initialized signs, and seems a lot less visually motivated than AdaSL in my eyes. It’s derived from American sign language; thus imported and altered within Ghana. AdaSL, on the other hand, uses a very vast sign space (sometimes even down to the toes), and is a language with huge hand and arm rotations; mouthings in Twi, sometimes English, and also other mouth gestures: growling, clicking etc.; and very strong facial expressions. Like I already explained in the mentioned earlier blog post, AdaSL incorporated a lot of gestures which West African hearing also use and is fully developed from the culture and life here.

A young man who finished school, told me that a teacher of his school, granted AdaSL a lower status than GSL; but he himself though that it came down the same thing: communicating effectively. The deaf of Adamorobe generally seem to have a neutral feeling towards the difference between the two languages. Some of them use GSL at me, but I’ve understood that the reason for that is merely because they just feel like doing that sometimes or – which is the case more often – because they think I’m very familiar with American signs. They have had white Americans here (using ASL, very similar to GSL) and they seem to think that ‘the country of white people’ is homogeneous to the point of culture ànd sign. To prove them wrong, I showed some of them some movies in BSL and VGT.

GSL doesn’t only seep in through the church. It’s the national sign language in Ghana and is therefore used in the schools for the deaf. The eight school children of Adamorobe, thus ‘completely’ use GSL, which looks very different than the ‘basic GSL with heavy to very heavy AdaSL accent’ of the deaf adults. These youngsters have job opportunities outside the village, because their schooling opens doors from them; but in Adamorobe some amongst them are struggling because they don’t all master AdaSL. You see, the school children are in a boarding school and are only in the village for a couple of weeks. In august they’ll be here and I’ll focus specifically on them, their language use, their attitudes, plans for the future etc. There you go: to be continued.