View source for French Sign Language

{{Use Canadian English|date = February 2019}}
{{short description|Sign language used predominately in France and French-speaking Switzerland}}
{{More citations needed|date=March 2011}}
{{Infobox language
| name          = French Sign Language
| image         = French signs language (LSF).jpg
| imagescale    = 
| imagecaption  = LSF in [[French manual alphabet]]
| nativename    = ''Langue des signes française''
| states        = [[France]], [[Switzerland]]
| speakers      = {{sigfig|103,405|2}} 
| date          = 2019
| ref           = e25
| speakers_label= Signers
| familycolor   = sign
| fam1          = [[French Sign Language family|Francosign]]
| ancestor      = [[Old French Sign Language|Old French Sign]]
| dia1          = Marseille Sign Language{{Citation needed|date=June 2022}}
| iso3          = fsl
| lc1           = ssr
| ld1           = Swiss French SL
| glotto        = fren1243
| glottoname    = French Sign Language
| glotto2       = swis1241
| glottoname2   = Swiss-French Sign Language
| ELP           = 7360
| ELPname       = Swiss-French Sign Language
}}

'''French Sign Language''' ({{langx|fr|langue des signes française}}, '''LSF''') is the [[sign language]] of [[Deafness in France|deaf and hard-of-hearing people in France]] and in [[Romandy|French-speaking parts]] of [[Switzerland]].  According to ''[[Ethnologue]]'', it has 100,000 native signers.

French Sign Language is related and partially ancestral to [[Dutch Sign Language]] (NGT), [[Flemish Sign Language]] (VGT), [[Belgian-French Sign Language]] (LSFB), [[Irish Sign Language]] (ISL), [[American Sign Language]] (ASL), [[Quebec Sign Language|Quebec (also known as French Canadian) Sign Language]] (LSQ), [[Brazilian Sign Language]] (LSB or Libras) and [[Russian Sign Language]] (RSL).

== History ==
[[File:The French sign language alphabet with ornate border, above Wellcome V0016556 (retouched).jpg|thumb|Vintage illustration of the French fingerspelling]]
French Sign Language is frequently, though mistakenly, attributed to the work of [[Charles Michel de l'Épée]] (l'abbé de l'Épée). In fact, he is said to have discovered the already existing language by total accident; having ducked into a nearby house to escape the rain, he fell upon a pair of deaf twin sisters and was struck by the richness and complexity of the language that they used to communicate among themselves and the deaf Parisian community.{{Citation needed|date=October 2009}} The [[abbé]] set himself to learning the language, now known as [[Old French Sign Language]], and eventually he established a free school for the deaf. At this school, he developed a system he called "methodical signs", to teach his students how to read and write. The abbé was eventually able to make public demonstrations (1771–1774) of his system, demonstrations that attracted educators and celebrities from all over the continent and that popularised the idea that the deaf could be educated, especially by gesture.

The methodical signs he created were a mixture of sign language words he had learned with some grammatical terms he invented. The resulting combination, an artificial language, was over-complicated and completely unusable by his students. For example, where his system would elaborately construct the word "unintelligible" with a chain of five signs ("interior-understand-possible-adjective-not"), the deaf natural language would simply say "understand-impossible".  LSF was not invented by the abbé, but his major contributions to the deaf community were to recognize that the deaf did not need oral language to be able to think, and to indirectly accelerate the natural growth of the language by virtue of putting so many deaf students under a single roof.

From this time French Sign Language flourished until the late 19th century when a schism developed between the [[Manualism and oralism|manualist and oralist]] schools of thought. In 1880 the [[Second International Congress on Education of the Deaf|Milan International Congress of Teachers for the Deaf-Mute]] convened and decided that the oralist tradition would be preferred. In due time the use of sign language was treated as a barrier to learning to talk and thus forbidden from the classroom.

This situation remained unchanged in France until the late 1970s, when the deaf community began to militate for greater recognition of sign language and for a bilingual education system. In 1991 the National Assembly passed the Fabius law, officially authorising the use of LSF for the education of deaf children. A law was passed in 2005 fully [[Recognition of sign languages|recognising LSF]] as a language in its own right.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006071191&idArticle=LEGIARTI000006524761&dateTexte=20170815|title=Article L312-9-1|website=Legifrance.gouv.fr|access-date=19 October 2017|archive-date=11 October 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171011043800/https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006071191&idArticle=LEGIARTI000006524761&dateTexte=20170815|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Alphabet===
The [[French manual alphabet]] is used both to distinguish signs of LSF and to incorporate French words while signing.

==See also==
* [[Old French Sign Language]]
* [[Signed French]]
* [[French Sign Language Academy]]
*[[American Sign Language]]

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://fr.wikibooks.org/wiki/LSF The LSF wikibook] {{in lang|fr}}

{{Languages of France}}
{{Languages of Switzerland}}
{{Languages of French Guiana}}
{{French Sign Language languages}}
{{sign language navigation}}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:French Sign Language| ]]
[[Category:French Sign Language family]]
[[Category:Languages of France]]
[[Category:Languages of Switzerland]]
[[Category:Languages of French Guiana]]
[[Category:Sign languages of France]]