Sign language

Sign language is a way of communicating by using one hand or two hands. Deaf people use sign language to communicate with other deaf people and other hearing people. It can also be used by people who are unable to communicate using spoken words.

Deaf people usually learn sign language with their family. Deaf students can learn sign language at school. Other people may choose to learn sign language by going to signing classes or by studying a sign language workbook, which can come with an interactive DVD.

Sign language is an important method of communicating for deaf people. Deaf people can also understand spoken words by looking at the movement of the speaker's lips. This is known as lip reading. Deaf people will sometimes lip read while signing to someone.

There are many different types of sign language worldwide. Some of the most commonly used types of sign language are listed here:

• American Sign Language used in the United States and other places worldwide.
• Auslan used in Australia.
• British Sign Language used in the United Kingdom
• Mexican Sign Language used in Mexico
• Zambian Sign Language used in Zambia

When a person is not able to hear, this person will probably (depending on the level of deafness, be unable to speak). So, naturally, a sign language appears in a community unable to hear and speak. First of all, sign languages are not “mimics” or gestural version of spoken languages, as many people may think. Sign languages are independent languages, with own grammar, syntax, morphology and semantics.

Definition

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, Sign language is:

• 1. (Noun) a language that uses a system of manual, facial, and other body movements as the means of communication, especially among deaf people.
• 2. (Noun) a method of communication, as between speaks of different languages, that uses hand movements and other gestures.

Sign languages are languages that, instead of using sounds to create words, use gestures. Each gesture in sign language represents a word. Also, there is a “hand alphabet”, in which each hand position represents a letter in the alphabet. Sign languages are not universal. That means that there isn’t a single sign language for all the users around the world. Each deaf community can develop their own sign language, by natural need. However, these sign language can be influenced by other sign and spoken languages.

History

Sign language always existed in deaf communities. In ancient texts we see authors commenting about deaf people and sign language. In western world, the first studies dedicated to sign languages date from the 17th century, in 1620, in Spain, the priest Juan Pablo Bonnet published a text about teaching deaf people to speak, using gestures as a tool. The language of signs created by Bonet was used by Abbé Charles-Michel de l-Épée, to create an alphabet in the 18th century. This alphabet was changed in very few aspects until nowadays version, largely used in many countries.

The sign alphabet created by l-Épée, however, is not the origin of the French Sign Language, the sign language that influenced many others sign languages around the world. The system by l-Épée was created to teach deaf people, who already used the Old French Sign Language, to read and write in French. This was a great advance, because proved that deaf could be educated and didn’t needed the spoken languages to think and learn.

Linguistical Aspects

Sign languages have some important elements: the hands configurations, which are the hands shapes to create words; the facial and corporal expressions; and the Sign Writing (SW), which is the way used to write in sign language.

Sign language grammar is quite different from the spoken languages grammar. This is due to the fact that, in many sign languages, the linguistics complements to the verbs or subjects are already within the sign used. But, as the spoken languages, there isn’t an universal grammar for sing languages.

The hands configurations are the positions made with the hands that create the signs. Some words are made with only one hand, and others are made with both hands. The signs no obligatory are alike their significant (not always a sign will remind us the object).

As an auxiliary to the words made with hand configurations, there are the fingerspeeling, or dactylology, also known as “hand alphabet” in which each hand configuration represents a letter in the alphabet. This tool is used to spell names, words from the spoken languages, acronyms; in sum, concepts to which there isn’t a sign yet. As the sign languages are not universal, so are the sign alphabets. They can use only one hand or both hands.

Writing Sing Languages

There isn’t official way of writing signs, and even some users of sign language don’t think “sign writing” is something useful. Usually, deaf people use the writing from the spoken language in their country. However, there are some ways developed to represent a sign language through writing.

• • The Stokoe notation, devised by Dr. William Stokoe for his 1965 Dictionary of American Sign Language, is an abstract phonemic notation system;
• • The Hamburg Notation System (HamNoSysDavid);
• • Sign Language International Phonetic Alphabet (SLIPA);
• • SignWriting, developed by Valerie Sutton in 1974;
• • si5s;
• • ASL-phabet, a system designed by Dr. Sam Supalla ;

Deaf And Deafness

Deaf is person who have, due to congenital factors (factors already born with the person), or due to external factors, a certain level of deafness. Deafness is when the biological sense of hearing doesn’t recognize all the sounds. So, a deaf person is not able to hear some sounds.

Deaf people may have hearing loss from birth; or may acquire it by external factors, that can be sickness or great exposition to high sounds; also, aged people can acquire deafness by time. Deafness does not have only extremes (or the people can hear perfectly or is completely deaf), by opposite, deafness has certain levels. These levels goes from light deafness (a person is not able to hear the lower sounds), to deeply deafness (unable to hear almost all kinds of sounds). Also, deafness is not obligatory the same for both ears: a person may have different levels of hearing loss in each ear.

Nowadays deaf people count not only with sign language, but with fonoaudiology (or speech therapy, a treatment to help people to use speech) and with hearing aids, that are special devices put inside the ears, which works as amplifiers to sounds. However, depending on the level of deafness, not always speech therapy and hearing aids will be useful to a deaf people.

Importance to Deaf Culture

One of the most important social fight nowadays in deaf communities is the defense for the respect and recognize of a deaf culture. The most important factor to the claim of a deaf culture is the sign language.

Through the sign language deaf people can create a social and cultural identity. In this identity are included habits, way of seeing the world and even a literature. There’s still a great discussion in if either exists or not exists a deaf culture, but, in defense that “exists” sign languages are the most important element.

Other pages

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Sign language

• American Sign Language
• VRS
• deaf

Other websites

• ASL browser(See lots of signs in American Sign Language)
• British Sign Language Learn more about British Sign Language.
• British Sign Online Online British Sign Language course.
• ASLPro.com Home