Varieties of American Sign Language

In 1973, American Sign Language was brought to Bolivia by Eleanor and Lloyd Powlison, missionaries from the United States.

Today LSB is used by more deaf Bolivians than the reported 400 in 1988 in the Ethnologue report,[2] due to the introduction of bilingual education (LSB as primary language and Spanish as secondary language) originally in Riberalta and its adoption to other schools in Bolivia with the support of the Education Ministry of Bolivia and the growing social exchange of the Deaf.

ASL signers from the US are reported to have a hard time understanding videos in LSB, and LSB signers have a hard time understanding ASL videos, and Burundian Deaf consider their language to be distinct from ASL and from neighboring sign languages, such as Ugandan and Rwandan Sign.

It is used primarily by people born after 1960, and is about 60% cognate with American Sign Language (Woodward 1991, 1992).

For example, there may be differences in sentence structure, verb morphology, and word order.

This is because most schools for the deaf in the region were founded by the American missionary Andrew Foster or by his students, starting in 1974.

[citation needed] The relationship of LSAF to standard American Sign Language has not been systematically assessed.

[13] As in other African derivations of ASL, the language has been affected by local gestures and conventions.

This project is run by the Haitian Deaf Community, in collaboration with Gallaudet University.

Foster went on to establish the first school for the deaf in Nigeria a few years later, and Nigerian Sign Language shows influence from GSL.

[18] GSL is supported by the Ghana National Association of the Deaf which has their headquarters in Accra.

The language is used in three programs for the deaf, but not throughout the country: It is not used in the large cities of Rabat, Tangier, or Casablanca, for example.

Deaf education in Nigeria was based on oral method and existing indigenous sign languages were generally regarded as gestural communication prior to Andrew Foster's arrival.

There is a Ghanaian influence in NSL; both are based on American Sign Language.

As in much of West Africa, the first schools for the deaf were founded by the American missionary Andrew Foster or his students.