Sign language

HISTORY

Sign languages have always existed in deaf communities. In ancient texts we see authors commenting about deaf people and sign language.

One of the earliest written records of a sign language is from the fifth century BC, in Plato's Cratylus, where Socrates says: "If we hadn't a voice or a tongue, and wanted to express things to one another, wouldn't we try to make signs by moving our hands, head, and the rest of our body, just as dumb people do at present?"

Many medieval monks were forbidden to speak at meals. So an elaborate sign language evolved. Monks that were forbidden to communicate with their hands talked with their feet instead.

Native Americans created a universal sign language that allowed two thirds of all Indigenous tribes to communicate across most of North America, hundreds of years before Europeans invented a sign language of their own.

In the western world, the first studies dedicated to sign languages date from the 17th century. In 1620, the Spanish priest Juan Pablo Bonnet published Reducción de las letras y arte para enseñar a hablar a los mudos (‘Reduction of letters and art for teaching mute people to speak’) in Madrid, a text about teaching deaf people to speak, using gestures as a tool.

An engraving in Juan Pablo Bonet's book 

The language of signs created by Bonet was used by Abbé Charles-Michel de l-Épée (November 24, 1712 - December 23, 1789), to create a finger-spelling alphabet in the 18th century. This alphabet has changed very little since then, and is still used today in France and North America.

Even before l-Épée developed his alphabet, a 200-strong deaf community in 18th-century Paris were already used Old French Sign Language, and could read and write in French. This was a great advance, because it proved that deaf people could be educated and didn’t needed speech to think and learn.

It is said that the Abbé de l'Épée stumbled across two sisters communicating in signs and, through them, became aware of the Parisian signing community. Épée saw their signing as beautiful but primitive, and he set about developing his own unique sign system ("langage de signes méthodiques"), which borrowed signs from Old French Sign Language and combined them with an idiosyncratic morphemic structure which he derived from the French language.

Epée founded the world's first free school for the deaf, in Paris in the early 1760s. The students there were taught Épée's French sign language and alphabet. As deaf schools inspired by Épée's model sprung up around the world, the language was to influence the development of many other sign languages, including American Sign Language.

Charles-Michel de L'Épée (1712-1789).

Helen Keller (1880-1968) lost her sight and hearing at 19 months, probably from scarlet fever or meningitis. As a child, she developed her own sign language to communicate with her parents. She went onto become a world renowned political activist and crusader for the handicapped.

International Sign (IS), an international pidgin sign system was first used, at the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) congress in Bulgaria in 1976. Today, it is the sign language used at international meetings such as the WFD congress, events such as the Deaflympics and in video clips produced by deaf people and watched by other deaf people from around the world,

FUN SIGN LANGUAGE FACTS

The sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s funeral was accused of being a ‘fake’, as he made meaningless hand gestures that did not reflect established signs.

In 2003 British Sign Language was recognized as an official British language.

Two men and a woman signing. By David Fulmer from Pittsburgh

Papua New Guinea's government has officially endorsed sign language as the country's fourth official language, alongside English, Tok Pisin and Motu.

Deaf people who speak the US sign language ASL are unable to understand those who speak BANZSL, the sign language used in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. There is only a 31% overlap between the two languages, meaning that even though their respective countries speak English, their deaf communities are unable to communicate.

Until 1979, deaf kids in Nicaragua were stigmatized and barred from normal school. With deaf schools opening, teens developed a unique language, after rejecting the sign language the teachers attempted to teach. Within six years younger students joining were fluent and versed in the new sign language, stunning linguists. It is now the official sign language of Nicaragua.

The Nicaraguan Sign Language is the only language created to have been recorded from its birth.

Just as some people talk in their sleep, sign language speakers have been known to sign in their sleep.

Babies can learn sign language well before they learn to speak and this can help them will full language later on.

Apes can learn sign language and communicate using it.