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TM rne;ve;~nt ifa rn{ctfonary ifNamibfan Sl{Jn LaYltJuaee SACKEUS P . ASHIPALA, PROFELIUS DANIEL, MARl US N. HAIKALI, NANGOLO ISRAEL, FESTUS T. LINUS, HENOCK H . NIILENGE, TIM 0 N Y F . H A I D U WAH, AND R A UNA N. HAS H I Y A N A H IN COLLABORATION WITH RUT HMO R G A N e are a group of six Deaf and two hearing Namibians who have come to Gallaudet University for fifteen months. The United Nations Commission on Namibia is funding our program . Our aim is to learn how to analyze our own sign language, to improve our English, and to receive leadership training. Later we will discuss how and why we are analyzing our sign language. To do this, we are working with Ruth Morgan, a linguist at Gallaudet. The situation we come from is unique and complex. Therefore, we need first to give you some background information before we discuss how we are making a dictionary of our sign language, so you will understand how special circumstances have influenced our Deaf culture and the development of our sign language. We were living in Northern Namibia until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when we left our country because we felt we could not receive the education we wanted. Our education system was under the South African government, which has controlled Namibia since 1915. We went to live in Angola, where we stayed until we came to Gallaudet University in 1988. We expect Namibia to be independent by December. When our country is independent, we will go home and begin to improve Deaf education there. We will first describe our life in Namibia and then describe our life in Angola. Life in Namibia Our families are all hearing and live in traditional villages, where they farm. Namibia is a country that has many different cultural groups, so many different languages are used in our country. We are all Ovawambos, which is the largest cultural group in Northern Namibia. Our families all speak Oshiwambo, one of many Bantu languages spoken in Namibia. Oshiwambo has many different dialects. Some of the other lan- The Development of a Dictionary of Namibian Sign Language guages spoken by different cultural groups are Nama, Herero, Damara, English, Afrikaans , Oshikwangali, and Oshirozi. Most hearing Namibians know several languages, and communication among different groups is common. Even though Namibia is home to numerous hearing cultural groups who speak many different languages, we don't know yet what the situation is for most deaf people in Namibia; sign language in our country has never been researched before. There may be many sign languages in Namibia, or there may be only one sign language. We will know this after we do our own work in Namibia. The South African government's apartheid policy has influenced our sign language situation; we do not know the sign language used by white Deaf Namibians or by San Deaf Namibians. We grew up in a country where apartheid forced members of these different groups (whether hearing or Deaf) to live separately. In Namibia there are separate living areas and separate schools for blacks and whites. Schools for Deaf students are segregated as well, with different schools for black and white deaf children. Our sign language comes from that used outside the classroom by black deaf students in schools in Northern Namibia. While we were living in Namibia, there were two schools for black deaf students-Engela and Eluwa. Engela was the first school for deaf students. It was started by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Namibia around 1970. This church was originally founded by Finnish missionaries in the late 1800s and later was given over to the Namibian people themselves. The teachers in the school used Simultaneous Communication, with signs that followed Oshiwambo word order. One of the deaf members of our group attended Engela as a student from 1972 to 1974. He told us that the first two teachers in this school were black Namibians who had been sent to Pretoria, South Africa, for training. The sign system used in some of the schools for black deaf children in South Africa at that time was the Paget-Gorman system. This system, invented in England by a hearing person to teach English to deaf children, is not a natural sign language. It had been used in South African black schools since the 1960s. At Engela, the children used the same sign vocabulary as the teachers...

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