Austrian Sign Language
Sign language · official in 1 country
Österreichische Gebärdensprache, ÖGS for short, is the sign language of Austria's Deaf community. The Austrian Parliament recognised it in law on 1 September 2005, after a campaign by the Deaf community that lasted 15 years. Its fingerspelling signs each letter of the German alphabet, the three umlauts and the trigraph sch.
The language on record
- Own name
- Österreichische Gebärdensprache
- ISO 639-3
- ASQ
- Script
- Signed
- Family
- French Sign Language family
- Official in
- 1 country
Where Austrian Sign Language is official
Austria alone. The European Commission counts sign language among Austria's recognised minority languages, beside Hungarian, Slovenian, Burgenland-Croatian and Romany.
Official beside Austrian Sign Language
About Austrian Sign Language
Which sign languages ÖGS resembles
The relationships are unsettled, and no detailed study has measured them. ÖGS and Hungarian Sign Language seem to be related through history, since the first school for the deaf was in Vienna, but Hungarian Sign Language groups with its own neighbours rather than with ÖGS. ÖGS shares parts of its grammar with German Sign Language and Swiss Sign Language while its vocabulary differs, as Skant and colleagues found in 2002. Wittmann placed it in the French Sign Language family in 1991.
How ÖGS won recognition in law
The Deaf community campaigned for 15 years. Parliament recognised ÖGS on 1 September 2005. The Austrian Federation of the Deaf, the Österreichischer Gehörlosenbund, represents the community, and professional ÖGS interpreters have one nationwide association. Krausneker put the number of users at about 10,000 in 2006.
What research has been done on ÖGS
Linguistic research on ÖGS began in the 1990s, mainly at the universities of Klagenfurt and Graz. From 2015 to 2018 Klagenfurt ran the Erasmus+ project Deaf learning for adults whose first language is ÖGS and whose second is written German, with the aim of raising literacy. A follow-up, Deaf language awareness, ran until July 2021 and built online courses in ÖGS and written German for self-study.
The manual alphabet has 26 signs for the basic letters, 3 for ä, ö and ü, and 1 for sch.
Common questions
Questions about Austrian Sign Language
Is Austrian Sign Language the same as German Sign Language?
No. The two share aspects of grammar, but their vocabulary differs, and one classification places ÖGS in the French Sign Language family.
When did Austria recognise its sign language?
On 1 September 2005, when the Austrian Parliament recognised ÖGS in law. The recognition followed a 15-year campaign by the Deaf community, and the Österreichischer Gehörlosenbund, the Austrian Federation of the Deaf, speaks for that community today.