The Cued Speech adaptation for the Malagasy language was developed by Dr. R. Orin Cornett and Rev. Denis Mermod of Switzerland in 1977. This adaptation is unique in that the vowel phonemes were deemed sufficiently contrastive through speechreading alone. Therefore, the position of the hand is always at the side placement while cueing. This system also differs from several other adaptations of Cued Speech in that it only uses six (6) handshapes.
Malagasy is spoken in Madagascar, the island country off the eastern coast of Africa.