TOMORROW MARKS THE beginning of the International Week of the Deaf with ‘Equality for Deaf People’ as the theme this year. The Irish Deaf Society is calling for recognition of Irish Sign Language (ISL) in Ireland.

Like all signed languages, ISL is not just about the movement of hands, it also involves body movement, facial expressions and using the space around you to convey what you are saying.

Just like spoken English, ISL has regional signs or ‘accents’ and there are also gender signs. This is due to the fact that deaf boys and girls were mainly educated separately and so deaf males are more likely to sign days of the week with two hands while deaf females use one hand.

To mark the beginning of the International Week of the Deaf, the organisation has given TheJournal.ie some key ISL phrases in these very short videos for you all to learn.

Hello

How are you?

Thank you

I am fine, thank you

Goodbye, see you later

And in preparation for Arthur’s Day…

A spokesperson for the society told TheJournal.ie that people tend to assume that all deaf people are great lip-readers and can become frustrated when a deaf person cannot understand them. With that in mind, they gave us this little test for you all to see how good you are at lip-reading. Let us know how you get on…

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