Danish Sign Language

Danish Sign Language (Danish: Dansk tegnsprog, DTS) is the sign language used in Denmark. Danish Sign Language (Danish: Dansk tegnsprog, DTS) is the sign language used in Denmark. Henri Wittmann (1991) assigned DSL to the French Sign Language family because of similarities in vocabulary. However, the founder of the first deaf school in Denmark, Peter Atke Castberg, was receptive to local sign language in 1807 and so may have introduced FSL signs to the local language rather than FSL itself. Norwegian Sign Language is generally thought to be a descendant of DSL. However, it may well be a mixture of DSL and indigenous sign, parallel to the situation between Swedish Sign Language and Finnish Sign Language. Icelandic Sign Language is closer; 37% of a set of analyzed signs (Aldersson 2006) were completely different in structure and a further 16% were similar but not the same. Faroese Sign Language and Greenlandic Sign Language are more clearly dialects of DSL.