Who Created Sign Language is No More a Mystery  

A sign language substitutes physical action, movements and gestures for audible words and sound patterns. The users of sign language read these interlinking visual signs and gesticulations and derive meanings according to their significations. In fact, the science and grammar behind the operation of sign language is far more complex than oral languages. So, have you ever wondered about who created sign language? 

A gradual evolution  

Sign language did not evolve in a day. It came out after several years of oppression faced by the deaf community. The first sparks against the inhumanly treatment came out in the Renaissance period when the deaf challenged their “non person” status. With fresh efforts put into the education of the deaf, sign language made its first appearance. It was with the Italian doctor Geronimo Cardano that it was first realized that hearing was not compulsory for learning. The deaf could pick up written forms of diction. 

The Benedictine monk Pedro Ponce de Leon was a contemporary of Geronimo Cardano and he took pains to educate deaf children in Spain. Pedro’s efforts inspired Juan Pablo de Bonet and he used techniques of writing and alphabet reading. He invented specialized manual alphabets that signified various speech sounds and became the first of its kind in the history of sign language.    

Formal deaf education 

Abbé de L'Epée is another leading name in the evolution of sign languages. His bid to impart religious education to two deaf sisters led him to establish the Institut National des Jeune Sourds-Muets in 1771. Interesting, L'Epée picked up the home signs used by the parents of his students and improvised on these to form his standard sign language. Now it is known as Old French Sign Language. Hence, if you ask now ‘Who created sign language?’ many will name L'Epée, the “Father of Sign Language and Deaf Education”. 

The German educator Samuel Heinicke had a different approach to sign language. He preferred the oral method of speech reading to the written one. This has subsequently been called ‘Oralism’ as distinct from sign language. This teaches the deaf how to read lips and ‘speak’ by feeling the vibrations in the throat of a real speaker. 

Sign language in America  

Dr. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was the initiator of sign language in America. His efforts towards this direction began with his neighbor’s deaf daughter Alice. He subsequently met Abbé Roche Ambroise Sicard and Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc, teachers at the National Institute for Deaf-Mutes in Paris and they helped him learn the method of deaf education.   

His return to America promoted the foundation of the American Asylum for Deaf-Mutes in 1817 in Hartford. This became as popular among American deaf as L'Epée's school in Paris. In a similar process that L'Epée had followed, soon the American Sign Language came into play. In 1864, the National Deaf-Mute College was established by the joint efforts of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet’s son Edward Miner Gallaudet and the Congress.