Voices 2005

Part of the BBC regional news is signed

Discovering sign language dialects

Regional variations of BSL are very different and researchers at the university want to compile a library of the regional dialects.

It is asking regular BSL users to tell them about the signs they use or know.

Dr Rachel Sutton-Spence, a lecturer from the university's Centre for Deaf Studies said, "Although BSL is used throughout the British Isles, there are considerable regional variations.

"If you are really into signing you can tell what part of the country someone is from from how they sign certain words.

"For example, Bristolian signers will use different signs for the words toilet, theatre, and news, and how colours are signed, are different.

"If you ask a hearing person to describe the Bristolian accent they might say we tend to put the letter L onto the end of words.  So Canada would be pronounced 'Canadal'.

"But in signing there isn't an accent as such;  it is the use of certain signs that define the regional dialect - and that's what we are trying to establish in the survey.

"I'd be very interested to find how many variants around the county there are, but I suspect it could be around 30," she said. 

It is thought many of the regional signs have their origins in the residential schools for the deaf that existed in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Children and teachers in these schools often developed their own particular signs as there was no national standard sign language.


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