Bulgarian Sign Language (in Bulgarian: "български жестомимичен език (БЖЕ)") is the language, or perhaps languages, of the deaf community in Bulgaria.
Primary schools were established for the deaf. Russian Sign Language was introduced in 1910, and allowed in the classroom in 1945, and Wittmann (1991) classifies it as a descendant of Russian Sign.[3] However, Bickford (2005) found that Bulgarian Sign formed a cluster with Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, and Polish Sign.[4] The language of the classroom is different from that used by adults outside,[1] and it is not clear if Wittmann and Bickford looked at the same language; nor, if one is derived from Russian Sign, if it is a dialect or if it creolized to form a new language.
^Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Bulgarian Sign Language". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.
^Wittmann, Henri (1991). "Classification linguistique des langues signées non vocalement." Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 10:1.215–88.[1]
^a Sign-language names reflect the region of origin. Natural sign languages are not related to the spoken language used in the same region. For example, French Sign Language originated in France, but is not related to French. Conversely, ASL and BSL both originated in English-speaking countries but are not related to each other; ASL however is related to French Sign Language.
^b Denotes the number (if known) of languages within the family. No further information is given on these languages.
