Development of Malaysian Sign Language in Malaysia

Abstract

This paper provides an insightful description of the development of Malaysian Sign Language (BIM) in Malaysia. BIM began its journey from the establishment of a deaf school in Penang, which was known as Federation School for the Deaf (FSD) in 1954. Early preliminary findings found that indigenous sign words emerged through gestural communication between deaf students at the FSD outside their classroom. For the sake of educating deaf students, American Sign Language (ASL) was brought into Johor in 1964 and Manually Coded Malay (KTBM) started to settle in Penang in 1978 after Total Communication was introduced into the education for deaf students. Most of the time, KTBM has been dominating the education system for deaf students. A group of deaf persons founded an organization, Malaysia Federation of the Deaf (MFD) in 1997. The MFD started an initiative of BIM sign words collection from the deaf community. BIM sign words were compiled and published in 2000. The term “BIM” was officiated through this publication. The sign words in BIM books are scrutinized for their characteristics and influence, as in how they were formed.