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September 16, 2009
LSM: lengua de señas mexicana (Mexican sign language)
As a student of American Sign Language (ASL), my move to Mexico made me wonder what form of sign language was used here. I have seen some people signing here, and it seemed a lot like ASL. Of course, my current fluency in ASL is very low, not having used it since 2002. Since a lot of sign language derives from physical representations of objects and actions, it would make sense that there would be a lot of overlap.
Tonight, in looking at the list of languages by number of native speakers in Wikipedia, I discovered la lengua de señas mexicana. It does have some similar signs to ASL, which might be due to the fact that ASL and LSM have roots in Old French Sign Language (OFSL). According to Wikipedia, ASL predates LSM by 50 years, so the two are mutually unintelligible.
Maybe. I have not yet studied LSM, but I intend to start. One of the AULEX [english] dictionaries (in the Spanish version) is an español->lengua de las sigñas mexicana dictionary. Video examples of sentences replace the often bewildering drawings of sign execution, making for much easier understanding of the signs. The site even has a video basic sign set and a pdf-formatted introduction.
The interface for the online video dictionary for ASL dictionary by ASLPro.com is a little cumbersome, but it might help if you want to make some comparisons between LSM and ASL.
Posted by crispy at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)