African sign languages are not American product: Indigenous African Deaf People and indigenous African Sign Languages

Abstract

As an African sign linguist, I have been bombarded with comments such as, "Oh if you research on sign languages in Ghana, then you must know ASL"; "I guess all Deaf people in Africa know ASL because of Andrew Forster" etc. These comments come from people who genuinely have not taken time to study the dynamics of African sign languages. I must comment that American Sign Language (ASL) has strongly influenced sign languages on the African continent and most urban sign languages used in Africa (with connections to ASL) are believed to be mutually intelligible (of some sort) to ASL. In other words, there are lexical and grammatical similarities in some of these urban sign languages (which I term foreignbased African sign languages). This paper is intended to highlight the indigenous African Deaf people and their sign languages.