Western ZEI: Iranian Sign Language in Kermanshah
The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.
Zaban Eshareh Irani (ZEI) which is also referred to as Persian Sign Language (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2017) or Iranian Sign Language (Behmanesh, 2006) is a sign language used by the Deaf community in Iran. Although Deaf communities use this language to communicate to peers, it does not have any institutional support and the government does not recognize it as an official language. It has not been investigated whether there are variants of ZEI or not, but it seems likely that different variants of sign language exist in different parts of Iran.
Primary investigator: Yassaman Choubsaz
Project Details
Location: Iran, Southern Asia, Asia
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): Radboud University
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £10,000.00
Commencement Date: 01/2015
Project Status: Active
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