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A contact sign language, or contact sign, is a variety or style of language that arises from contact between deaf individuals using a sign language and hearing individuals using an oral language (or the written or manually coded form of the oral language). Contact languages also arise between different sign languages, although the term pidgin rather than contact sign is used to describe such phenomena. Contact sign has been characterized as "a sign language that has elements of both [a] natural sign language and the surrounding [oral] language".