Bura Sign Language
Encyclopedia
Bura Sign Language is an indigenous sign language
used by the Bura people around the village of Kukurpu in Nigeria
, an area with a high degree of congenital deafness. None of the signers have been to school, and there appears to be no influence of Western sign.
Bura SL has the lax hand shapes and large sign space characteristic of West African sign. Many of the words are similar or identical to those of Adamorobe Sign Language
and Nanabin Sign Language of Ghana; these involve conventionalized (co-verbal) gestures in the hearing population of West Africa, such as 'sweat' for "work" and 'sleep' for "next day".
Sign language
A sign language is a language which, instead of acoustically conveyed sound patterns, uses visually transmitted sign patterns to convey meaning—simultaneously combining hand shapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to fluidly express a speaker's...
used by the Bura people around the village of Kukurpu in Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
, an area with a high degree of congenital deafness. None of the signers have been to school, and there appears to be no influence of Western sign.
Bura SL has the lax hand shapes and large sign space characteristic of West African sign. Many of the words are similar or identical to those of Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language
Adamorobe Sign Language is an indigenous sign language used in Adamorobe, an Akan village in eastern Ghana. It is used by about 30 deaf and 1370 hearing people.”...
and Nanabin Sign Language of Ghana; these involve conventionalized (co-verbal) gestures in the hearing population of West Africa, such as 'sweat' for "work" and 'sleep' for "next day".