Fiji Sign Language

In Fiji, at the 2 main schools for deaf children (Gospel School for the Deaf and Hilton Special school), signed English with Australian lexicon words were used for many years. However, the Deaf growing up developed their own grammatical structures and signs based on their own culture and experiences. Initially, at the Hilton Special School in Suva, Fiji signing by deaf students was banned. [...] However, deaf students would sign together when the teachers were not looking or out on the playground. This is the basis of the initial formation of the sign language without any external input. Once Hilton school adopted Auslan sign language dictionaries for use in their classrooms Auslan terms started to be used as well. This has created a mixture of language influences with many Auslan terms but mostly local grammatical structures. Australians influenced the Gospel school for the Deaf and the community [...] in general. The lexicon of Fiji Sign Language used in the educational system was originally a mix of signs from individuals from Fiji, Australia, New Zealand and Nigeria (McKee et al, 2019).^[1] The language in use today, therefore, has influences even at the lexical level from linguistically unrelated signing systems.