Home· Club Information· Classes Offered· Word of the Week· Upcoming Events· Links to other Sites ·Some ASL History · Myths and Facts· Learn Sign Language!· Sign-up For Classes!

History of Sign Language
No one really knows when and where sign language began. It is possible that the earliest humans used a form of sign language before they developed spoken language. Likely the sign language was used less after the spoken language met communication needs. During this period, deaf people probably had very short lives if they were permitted to live at all. Many early societies would kill children with disabilities.
Some of the earliest records of sign language are in the Hebrew Talmud, and the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, both of Greece, and in the Code of Justinian, the Roman system of laws. Each of these countries knew deaf people used sign language but there were no schools for deaf people and sign language was probably known by small groups of deaf people who happened to live close together.
The first person we know who used sign language to teach deaf students was Pedro Ponce de Leon of Spain. Ponce de Leon was a monk of the Order of St. Benedict. These monks take a vow of silence and do not talk at all while they are in the monastery. Over many years they developed a series of signs that they used for everyday conversation. Then two deaf boys, the sons of a noble man, were sent to the monastery- Ponce de Leon was given the responsibility of training the boys. He first taught them sign language and a manual alphabet. He taught the boys to read and write and later they learned to speak. Ponce de Leon was the first known teacher of deaf children. This was in 1500.
During the 1600s another Spaniard, Juan Pablo Bonet, taught a deaf boy. Bonet wrote a book about teaching and included a one-hand manual alphabet.
The first free school for the deaf was established by the Abbe Charles Michael de I'Epee of Paris, France. He became interested in teaching deaf children when he met two sisters who were deaf. The sisters used their own sign language and Abbe de YEpee learned it to communicate with them. Soon he was looking for deaf people all over Paris and telling them to come to his school. He was given a copy of Bonet's book and he used the one- hand manual alphabet and the sign language of the deaf people of Paris.
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet lived in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1814, he met a small deaf girl and became interested in teaching her. Money was collected to send him to England and France to learn how to teach deaf people. He was not permitted to learn the English method but the Paris school was happy to have him learn their method. Gallaudet was in a hurry to get back to Hartford and start a school for deaf students there. He knew that he did not know enough to run the school alone so he asked one of the teachers from the Paris school to go to America with him and help start a school. This teacher was Laurent Clerc, a deaf man.
Gallaudet and Clerc opened the American Asylum of the Deaf and Dumb in Hartford on April 15,1817. This school is now known as the American School for the Deaf. Gallaudet and Clerc used sign language to teach the children. They also trained many teachers in this method. The French Sign Language that Gallaudet and Clerc brought to America spread over the country as the new teachers went to different states to start schools.
The deaf people who lived in America already had a system of signs. This would develop anywhere there were several deaf people. When deaf children entered any of the schools they learned new signs but they also taught their own signs to the other students. Gradually over many years, American Sign Language developed. There are some differences in the signs used in different parts of the country but the difference does not prevent deaf people from understanding each other. American Sign Language is a living language. New signs are being added with the development of technologies and the need to have signs for new things.
-Resource: None So Deaf Sarah E. Val


Home· Club Information· Classes Offered· Word of the Week· Upcoming Events· Links to other Sites ·Some ASL History · Myths and Facts· Learn Sign Language!· Sign-up For Classes!