Wikipedia's first sentence called it “sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-sayyid bedouin tribe in the negev deser”. Today it says “village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-sayyid bedouin tribe in the neg”.
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Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
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The opening as it read in 2010
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a sign language used by about 150 Deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel . As both Deaf and hearing people share a language, Deaf people are not stigmatised in this community, and marriage between Deaf and hearing people is common. The Al-Sayyid community (as of 2004) numbers around 3,000 in total, most of whom trace their ancestry back to the time the village was founded, in the mid 1800s, by a local woman and an Egyptian man. Two of this founding couple's five sons carried a gene for nonsyndromic, genetically recessive, profound pre-lingual neurosensory deafness. The descendants of the founding couple often married their cousins due to the tribe's rejection by its neighbours for being "foreign fellahin ". This meant that the gene became homozygous in several members of the family. ABSL was first studied in the end of the 1990s by anthropologist Shifra Kisch , and came to worldwide attention in February 2005 when an international group of researchers published a study of the language in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The spontaneous emergence of the language in the last 70 years, which has developed a complex grammar without influence from any other language, is of particular interest to linguists for the insights it provides into the birth of human language. ABSL shows a preference for Subject Object Verb word order (e.g. "WOMAN CHILD FEED"), in marked contrast to the dialect of Arabic spoken by hearing members of the community ( SVO ), as well as Hebrew ( SVO ), classical Arabic ( VSO ), and the predominant sign languages in the region, Israeli Sign Language and Jordanian Sign Language . The authors of the study see ABSL as evidence for the human tendency to construct communication along grammatical lines. Authors of the study ( Mark Aronoff from State University of New York at Stony Brook , Irit Meir and Wendy Sandler from the University of Haifa and Carol Padden from the University of California, San Diego ) also remarked on the speed with which a grammar emerged, with the SOV word-order emerging with the first generation of signers, as well as the language's continuing rapid development — the third generation is signing twice as fast as the first and is using longer sentences. Because many of the younger generation are now exposed to Israeli Sign Language and Jordanian Sign Language in school, and marriage outside the community is growing, it is unclear whether ABSL will survive. One in Twenty Haaretz, 2 June 2004 Kisch, Shifra. 2000. ‘Deaf discourse’ : Social construction of deafness in a Bedouin community in the Negev.1
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 346361730.
The opening as it stood in 2015 12 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL) is a village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel . As deafness is so frequent (4% of the population is deaf, compared to 0.1% in the United States) and deaf and hearing people share a language, deaf people are not stigmatised in this community, and marriage between deaf and hearing people is common.There is also no "Deaf" culture or politics.Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) Fox, Margalit (2008).
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 655625675.
The opening as it stood in 2020
Sign language local to Israel's al-Sayyid Bedouin village Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language ( ABSL ) is a village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel . As deafness is so frequent (4% of the population is deaf, compared to 0.1% in the United States) and deaf and hearing people share a language, deaf people are not stigmatised in this community, and marriage between deaf and hearing people is common. There is also no separate deaf culture or politics. Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) Fox, Margalit (2008).
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 951971084.
The opening as it stood on October 6, 2023 1 passage from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Sign language local to Israel's al-Sayyid Bedouin village Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language ( ABSL ) is a village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel . As deafness is so frequent (4% of the village's population is deaf, compared to 0.1% in the United States) and deaf and hearing people share a language, deaf people are not stigmatised in this community and marriage between deaf and hearing people is common. ABSL grammar developed quickly, with the signing of each generation becoming more complex than the last.Even though no evidence of phonological structure was found throughout the community, it seems to be emerging within individual families. Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) Fox, Margalit (2008).
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1168132948.
The opening as it stood in 2025
Sign language local to Israel's al-Sayyid Bedouin village Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language ( ABSL ) ( Arabic : لغة الإشارة لعشيرة السيد) is a village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-Sayyid Bedouin tribe in the Negev desert of southern Israel . As deafness is so frequent (4% of the village's population is deaf, compared to 0.1% in the United States) and deaf and hearing people share a language, deaf people are not stigmatised in this community and marriage between deaf and hearing people is common. ABSL grammar developed quickly, with the signing of each generation becoming more complex than the last. Even though no evidence of phonological structure was found throughout the community, it seems to be emerging within individual families. Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required) Fox, Margalit (2008).
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1292000618. This is our newest snapshot; the live article may have moved again since.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-sayyid bedouin tribe in the negev deser”. Today it says “village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-sayyid bedouin tribe in the neg”. Read the current article and compare.
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What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2010, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-sayyid bedouin tribe in the negev deser
Now
village sign language used by about 150 deaf and many hearing members of the al-sayyid bedouin tribe in the neg
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.
