 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (April 2022) |
| Koniya Sign | |
|---|---|
| Amami Oshima Sign | |
| Native to | Japan |
| Region | Amami Ōshima |
Native speakers | 4 (2020)[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | jks |
| Glottolog | amam1247 |
Koniya Sign (Japanese: 古仁屋手話, romanized: Koniya Shuwa), or Amami Oshima Sign (AOSL; 奄美大島手話, Amamioshima Shuwa) is a village sign language, or group of languages, on Amami Ōshima, the largest island in the Amami Islands of Japan. In the region of Koniya on the island, there exist a high incidence of congenital deafness, which is dominant and tends to run in a few families; moreover, the difficulty of the terrain has kept these families largely separated, so that there is extreme lexical geographical diversity across the island, and AOSL is therefore perhaps not a single language.
- ^ Koniya Sign at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
