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Flemish and Dutch deaf people don’t always understand each other

People from different countries can speak the same language, but that does not mean they share the same sign language. The deaf communities in the Netherlands and Flanders, for example, each use their own sign language, with their own lexicon and grammar. More than that: Flemish deaf people sometimes understand Walloon sign language users better than their Dutch neighbours.

Sign languages are not passed down from one generation to the next in the same way as spoken languages. The majority of deaf children (90 to 95 percent) have hearing parents who generally don’t know sign language. Until the mid-1990’s, deaf children in Flanders and the Netherlands were therefore often only exposed to sign language when they went to a school for the deaf. Learning the language primarily happened on the playground, in the boarding house, and through contact with other (older) children, as sign language was not taught in class nor used as a  language of instruction. Nowadays, many deaf children in the Low Countries attend mainstream schools, and schools for the deaf play a much smaller role. As a result, the passing on of Flemish and Dutch Sign Language (VGT and NGT) from older to younger children has become less straightforward.

An important figure for deaf education, also in the Netherlands and Belgium, was the French priest Charles Michel de L’Epée. He began teaching deaf children in Paris in 1764. His approach was unique as he made use of signs. De L’Epée and his Parisian school for the deaf attracted considerable interest: Many interested visitors came to observe and subsequently established schools for the deaf in their own countries based on the French model. Among them was Henri Daniel Guyot, who established the first Dutch school for the deaf in Groningen in 1784. The founding of the first schools for the deaf in Belgium also shows a clear influence from Paris, and as in many countries, the adoption of the French method was accompanied by the adoption of (aspects of) Old French Sign Language. Relatively quickly, however, the Flemish and Dutch schools for the deaf replaced the manual method with the oral method, and signs disappeared from the classroom.

Exchange between the different schools for the deaf was limited. This, combined with the fact that deaf children learned signs primarily from one another, led to regional variation that persisted. In and around each school for the deaf, a regional variant of Dutch or Flemish Sign Language was used that differed from other variants primarily in its lexicon.

Influence of movement and expression

Research has shown that unrelated sign languages differ less from one another than unrelated spoken languages, partly due to the influence of the visual-gestural modality on sign language structure. For example, sign language users use space and combine multiple articulators (hand signs, facial expressions…) simultaneously. When signing that a car is approaching a person standing upright, both Dutch and Flemish sign language users can use the following construction:

The right hand represents the person, the left hand the car, and the movement of the left hand toward the right hand illustrates the movement of the car. The hands function as classifiers. Constructions with classifiers are likely used in all sign languages, and although the hand movements are conventionalised and often differ across sign languages, such constructions look remarkably similar in many sign languages. The sign language user can also show the person’s surprise at seeing the car come closer.

The end of Belgian Sign Language

In southern Belgium, both the spoken language and the sign language differ from those in Flanders. The sign language used there is called the Langue des Signes de Belgique Francophone (LSFB). Until roughly thirty years ago, people still spoke of a “Belgian Sign Language” and assumed that the various regional sign language varieties in Belgium together formed a single sign language. There was also a single Belgian deaf federation until the 1970s.

Following the federalisation of Belgium, the federation split into a Flemish and a Walloon federation. As a result, there were fewer and fewer contacts between Flemish and Walloon deaf people, and more and more sign language initiatives took place in Flanders or French-speaking Belgium alone. In 2000, the Flemish deaf community chose Flemish Sign Language as the name for the collection of sign language varieties used in Flanders.

Flemish and Walloon Sign Language have much in common

Research into the similarities and differences between Dutch Sign Language, Flemish Sign Language and Langue des Signes de Belgique Francophone remains limited, but sign language users in Flanders generally report that there are fewer differences between Flemish Sign Language and LSFB than between Flemish and Dutch Sign Language. In a small and fairly dated study from 1984, the American-British linguist Bencie Woll compared signs from twelve different sign languages, mainly European, including Flemish and Dutch Sign Language and Walloon Sign Language. She found that Walloon and Flemish Sign Language share many signs, unlike Flemish and Dutch Sign Language.

In two later articles (from 2004 and 2013), we examined the relationship between Dutch Sign Language and Flemish Sign Language. In both papers, we discussed the possible historical influence of Old French Sign Language through deaf education, as well as the role of spoken components, which are words or parts of words from the spoken language used with the manual sign. When signing CHAIR, for example, the sign language user articulates (with or without voice) the Dutch word stoel; the manual sign SIT is usually accompanied by the spoken component zit or zi. The possible functions of spoken components have been studied in Dutch Sign Language. One of these functions is to distinguish meaning, as in the signs BROTHER and SISTER, which are manually identical. As both Dutch and Flemish sign language users use spoken components drawn from Dutch, this could potentially make it easier to understand each other’s sign language.

This is precisely what Sáfár, Meurant, Haesenne, Nauta, De Weerdt and Ormel investigated in 2015. In their study, they examined whether Dutch deaf people understand Flemish Sign Language more easily than Walloon deaf people, or vice versa, and what role spoken components and certain iconic structures, such as classifier constructions, played in this. In short, their findings show that the use of iconic structures in Flemish Sign Language makes it easier for both Dutch and Walloon sign language users to understand it. Spoken components help Dutch sign language users to understand Flemish Sign Language. This is much less so for Walloon sign language users, though similarities between certain Dutch and French words (such as chocolade and chocolat) mean that spoken components are sometimes useful for Walloon deaf people too. When spoken components are made invisible, Walloon deaf people understand Flemish Sign Language more easily than Dutch deaf people do, but the difference is smaller than the researchers had expected.

Variation, standardisation, and recognition

As mentioned earlier, regional variants of sign language exist in both Flanders and the Netherlands. In 1997, the Flemish Deaf community decided against the standardisation of Flemish Sign Language. The online dictionary for Flemish Sign Language, first published in 2004, therefore also reflects the existing regional variation. In 2006, Flemish Sign Language was officially recognised by the Flemish Parliament as the visual-gestural natural language used in the Flemish Community and in the bilingual area of Brussels-Capital Region. Three years prior, in 2003, the Parliament of the French Community of Belgium recognised the Langue des Signes de Belgique Francophone.

Since 2002, the Netherlands has had a standard lexicon of basic and educational signs. The standardisation was based on an extensive inventory of over 15,000 signs, which showed that the greatest differences existed between the northern region (Groningen) and the west and south. The official online dictionary for Dutch Sign Language includes both standard signs and regional variants.

The standardisation of part of the Dutch Sign Language lexicon was a condition set by the Dutch government for the legal recognition of the language, but this standardisation has still not taken place despite years of campaigning by various committees. In 2019, three political parties put forward a legislative proposal, in the hope that it could be voted on in 2020 and that Dutch Sign Language would then be officially recognised. On 1 September 2020, the issue was discussed again in the House of Representatives, and it was decided that Dutch Sign Language would be formally recognised as an official language. The law came into effect on 1 July 2021.

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