The sign language has been acquired by at least five generations of deaf, native signers and features in all aspects of village life, including political, professional, educational, and religious settings.
Deaf people in the village express themselves using special cultural forms such as deaf dance and martial arts and occupy special ritual and social roles, including digging graves and maintaining water pipes.
Kata Kolok was most likely established due to the prevalence of hereditary sensorineural deafness caused by a recessive non-syndromic mutation of the MYO15A gene.
[1][4][5] In addition, at least eight hearing-impaired people from Bengkal who have left the village, then returning after a while were still able to use Kata Kolok.
[8] Unlike mentioned phonology characteristic of sign language, in Kata Kolok, it is almost impossible to identify minimal pairs, so it is difficult to determine the phoneme status of the palm forms used in gesturing.
[8] Basic palm shapes include the following configurations:[9] ^b Denotes the number (if known) of languages within the family.