Sign DAY 151 Monday, April 25, 2022

Have you ever noticed how much some people talk with their hands as they are telling a story. This is essentially Sign Language. And not everyone speaks the same type of Sign Language. There are over 100 types of Sign Language. These different sign languages are mostly built out of being associated with a school for the deaf, but they are generally organized already from a local deaf community. So at times a person is created for starting a Sign Language, but sign language mostly evolves just like spoken language, from a community of people speaking the language. In the case of Sign Language, it is from a community of deaf people. Schools for the deaf were instrumental in teaching sign language but were also instrumental in slowing the progress when the philosophy changed to a more “oralist” way of communicating for the deaf. Oralism educates deaf students by using lip reading, speech, and mimicking the mouth shapes and breathing patterns of speech. Oralism became popular 150 years ago, but over the last 50 years has lost it’s strength. The main goal of Oralism was to treat deaf children the same so that they were integrated with hearing children. This had the bad result of decreasing contact between deaf people. Oralism deprived Deaf children of both signed language and written language and does not work as well as Sign Language.

Using the same methods that destroyed Native American Languages, schools for the Deaf instructing in Oralism prevented deaf children from using sign language. Most schools have stopped this Oralistic way of teaching in favor of Sign Language. Or teach both.

Here are a few different Sign Langauges

British Sign Language (BSL), Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language
British Sign Language started with Thomas Braidwood in the late 1700s with the British schools for the deaf. British Sign Language spread to Australia and New Zealand. They even have signs for a few Maori words.

French Sign Language (LSF)
The deaf community of Paris has a great informal sign language in use. Then Charles Michel de l’Épée organized all the different signs and established a free school for teaching.

American Sign Language – ASL
Chinese Sign Language (CSL or ZGS)
Brazilian Sign Language (Libras)
Indo-Pakistani Sign Language