Bulgarian Sign Language

Bulgarian Sign Language (Bulgarian: Български жестомимичен език, romanized: Balgarski zhestomimichen ezik, BZhE) is the language, or perhaps languages, of the deaf community in Bulgaria.

Bulgarian Sign Language
Български жестомимичен език
Native to	Bulgaria
Native speakers	21,000 (2021 DBS/DOOR/SIL)[1] (2014)[2]
Language family	French Sign Austro-Hungarian Sign? Russian Sign Language creole? Bulgarian Sign Language
Language codes
ISO 639-3	bqn
Glottolog	bulg1240

Primary schools were established for the deaf. Russian Sign Language was introduced in 1910, and allowed in the classroom in 1945, and Wittmann (1991) classifies it as a descendant of Russian Sign.^[3] However, Bickford (2005) found that Bulgarian Sign formed a cluster with Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, and Polish Sign.^[4] The language of the classroom is different from that used by adults outside,^[2] and it is not clear if Wittmann and Bickford looked at the same language; nor, if one is derived from Russian Sign, if it is a dialect or if it creolized to form a new language.