Norwegian Sign Language
principal sign language of Norway
Norwegian Sign Language, or NSL (Norwegian Bokmål: norsk tegnspråk or Nynorsk: norsk teiknspråk, NTS), is the principal sign language in Norway. There are many sign language organizations and some television programs broadcast in NSL in Norway. The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation airs Nyheter på tegnspråk (News in Sign Language) daily and previously aired Tid for tegn (Time for Signs) through the years 2008-2011.
NSL is an official language as of 1 January 2022.
Relation to Malagasy Sign Language
The language is sometimes reported to be similar, or even identical to the sign language used in Madagascar. In fact, while Norwegian Sign Language may have influenced Malagasy sign language via the creation of schools for the deaf by Norwegian Lutheran missionaries, the languages are quite distinct. Out of a sample of 96 sign pairs, 18 pairs were identical between the two languages, 26 showed some level of similarity, and 52 appeared completely unrelated. It is not yet known to what degree the similarities are a result of direct borrowing, borrowing from a common source language (such as ASL or International Sign), mimesis of the thing they refer to, or sheer coincidence.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Norwegian Sign Language” is principal sign language of Norway. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Norwegian, Sign and Language, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1781613. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2008, 2011 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Norwegian Sign Language” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.