Mongolian Sign Language

Mongolian Sign Language (MSL; Mongolian: Монгол дохионы хэл, romanized: Mongol dokhiony khel) is a sign language used in Mongolia. Ethnologue estimates that there are between 9,000 and 15,000 deaf signers in Mongolia as of 2019^[update]. Mongolian Sign Language is widely used in areas where the Mongolian diaspora has immigrated. Such locations include California, Houston, and Charleston.

A school for the deaf was established in Mongolia in 1964 with assistance from the Soviet Union. This resulted in many similarities between MSL and Russian Sign Language (RSL) for a time, but the two languages have since developed to be separate and distinct.

Linda Ball, a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia, is believed to have created the first dictionary of MSL in 1995. In 2007, another MSL dictionary with 3,000 entries was published by Mongolia's Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science with assistance from UNESCO.

• "Now That's a Good Sign!" (PDF), Peace Corps Times (1), January 1995
• Torigoe, Takashi (April 2008), モンゴルのろう教育・現地調査報告, 途上国における特別支援教育開発の国際協力に関する研究 [Deaf education in Mongolia: Report of fieldwork] (PDF), 科学研究費補助金研究成果報告書, pp. 285–305, archived from the original (PDF) on 15 August 2011

• U. Badnaa; Linda Ball (1995), Монголын Дохионы Хелний Толь, OCLC 37604349
• Baljinnyam, N. 2007. A study of the developing Mongolian Sign Language. Master’s thesis, Mongolian State University of Education, Ulaanbaatar.
• Geer, L. (2011). Kinship in Mongolian Sign Language. Sign Language Studies 11(4):594–605.
• Geer, Leah. 2012. Sources of Variation in Mongolian Sign Language. Texas Linguistics Forum 55:33-42. (Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Symposium About Language and Society—Austin) Online version

• Homepage of Yümjiriin Mönkh-Amgalan at the National University of Mongolia, with a listing of his Mongolian-language papers about MSL