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Concept information

Preferred term

esoEstonian Sign Language  

Type

  • Language

Definition

  • Estonian Sign Language (ESL, ) is the national sign language of Estonia. In 1998 there were about 4,500 signers out of a deaf population of 2000 and a hearing-impaired population ten times that number. It is widespread in the cities of Tallinn and Pärnu among deaf ethnic Estonians; deaf Russian Estonians in Tallinn use Russian Sign Language, Russians outside Tallinn tend to use a Russian–Estonian Sign Language pidgin, or may be bilingual. In its formative stages, Estonian Sign Language was influenced by Russian and Finnish Sign Language; for example, the ESL sign for butterfly developed from the Finnish sign for bird. There are several dialects, the most archaic of which is the Pärnu variety.

ISO 639-3 code

  • eso

Notation

  • eso

In other languages

URI

http://lexvo.org/id/iso639-3/eso

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