A hand up for sign

lip-read and sign. She now works for Deaf Aotearoa helping members of Palmerston North’s deaf community with employment matters.

Sign language was a ‘‘beautiful, expressive language’’ and deaf people were visual people who relied on facial expressions, body language and movement, she said.

The biggest difference between English and sign language was a grammatical one. Sign language has its own grammatical structure and linguistic features, and does not use small words such as ‘‘it’s’’, ‘‘and’’ and ‘‘is’’.

Lianna Kennedy uses sign language to say "sign language (is) fun".

So, a signed interpretation of the English saying ‘‘I am going to the shop’’ is interpreted as ‘‘shop I go’’, she said.

New Zealand Sign Language became an official language in 2006, after a law change.

More than 20,000 people use sign language nationally, and about 4000 of these users were deaf people, 2013 census data shows.

But Kennedy said those numbers had likely grown since then, especially as kindergarten and school children learn to sign through educational programmes.

Speaking personally, Kennedy said sign language should be an option in New Zealand schools for children to learn.

She is proud to be deaf and able to communicate with both deaf people and those with hearing.

Staff at her local Marbecks cafe now know her order – a decaf long black – and basic signs such as thank you and you’re welcome.

‘‘It’s just a really fun way to be able to communicate.’’

But Kennedy said there were challenges too.

Palmerston North has a diverse community, with a range of ethnicities and spoken languages. Cultural barriers could pose challenges with members of the deaf community and at times deaf people ‘‘can feel isolated’’.

Some people used hearing aids, would lip-read or wrote things down for others to understand.

Although most were good to communicate with, Kennedy said there was still a ‘‘lack of awareness’’, which posed challenges to those who were deaf.

‘‘I feel normal. Deafness is just who I am.’’

Sign Language Week is in its 11th year.