Kata Kolok

Kata Kolok (literally "deaf talk") is the name given to a sign language of a village in northern Bali, Indonesia, which has had an extraordinarily high rate of deafness for several generations. As has happened elsewhere in similar circumstances, deaf and hearing people in the village have developed a sign language for communication.

Kata Kolok is unrelated to spoken Balinese, and lacks certain contact sign phenomena that often arise when a sign language and a spoken language are in close contact, such as fingerspelling and mouthing. It is also unrelated to other sign languages. It differs from other known sign languages in a number of respects: signers make extensive use of cardinal directions and real-world locations to organise the signing space, and they do not use a metaphorical “time line” for time reference. For subject-object marking, Kata Kolok uses strict word order instead of spatial agreement verbs.

Deaf people in the village express themselves using special cultural forms such as deaf dance and martial arts, and occupy special ritual and social roles, including digging graves and maintaining water pipes.