THE HISTORY OF ASL:

THE HISTORY OF ASL:

asl Story of American Sign Language

The roots of American Sign Language, or ASL, go back hundreds of years, to a time before

America was even a nation, to a tiny island off the coast of Massachusetts called Martha's

Vineyard.

Some of the colonists from England who settled there at the end of the 17th century were

deaf, and carried a gene for deafness.

By the mid 19th century there was a large deaf population on the island.

And they all spoke sign language.

It had developed organically, through natural socializing, and most of the hearing people

there spoke it too.

It isn't there anymore.

The deaf Martha's Vineyard residents started to leave the island in the 1800s, to attend

the first American school for the Deaf, established in Hartford Connecticut in 1817 by Thomas

THE HISTORY OF ASL:

Hopkins Gallaudet.

Gallaudet was a preacher who began to research methods for educating the deaf after meeting

his neighbor's deaf child.

He traveled to England to observe a method of training for speech and lipreading, but

the developers of that system were protective and unwilling to give away their secrets and

turned him away.

So he went to France where he was welcomed to the school for the deaf in Paris, which

used sign as a method of instruction.

He convinced Laurent Clerc, a deaf teacher and graduate of the Paris Deaf school, to

accompany him back to Hartford, where they founded the American School for the Deaf.

The school began with a mixture of sign systems.

There were many students who used the Martha's Vineyard sign, and they came together with

deaf students from around New England, some who had rudimentary gesture systems only used

in the home, and some with more developed systems that were used in towns with other

deaf people.

In school, they were exposed to each other, to Parisian Sign Language and to a method

for visually representing some aspects of English.

And ASL was born out of the mix.

Today, ASL is much closer to French Sign Language than it is to British Sign Language, which

THE HISTORY OF ASL:

has no historical connection to ASL.

Over the course of the 19th century deaf schools opened all over the US, and many graduates

of the Hartford school took their signing with them to careers as teachers and principals

across the country.

ASL became the language of the American deaf, deepening and expanding over generations of

use.

That process hit a roadblock in the 1880s, when proponents of oral education, including

Alexander Graham Bell, convinced many schools to discourage sign language in favor of speech

training.

Suddenly students were forbidden from signing, punished by having their hands tied behind

their backs.

They spent hours learning to mimic mouth shapes to produce vowels and consonants.

Hours they had once spent learning math, history, and literature.

But ASL lived on in the shadows and under the tables.

It wasn't until a century later that attitudes toward ASL began to change back.

Research began to show the benefit of having a full, easily acquired language as early

THE HISTORY OF ASL:

as possible, and the harm of not having one, which happened to many kids who could never

manage to acquire speech.

Deaf people became politically empowered, and advocated for giving ASL the respect it

deserved, and had earned, through more than two centuries of American history.

American Sign Language is a beautiful visual language,

with a history, a fascinating history,

of its arrival on the mainland.

Nearly 400 years ago, a man named Jonathan Lambert

who was deaf traveled from Kent, England

to the town of Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard.

After settling, his children were born

and they were also deaf.

Because Chilmark was a fishing village with no ships

or ports for travel,

And it's isolation from other towns,

there was no flow of outsiders.

As a result it was common for residents to marry

within the family and have children.

Because of this their genetic deafness spread to a point,

approaching the 19th century

1 in every 25 residents was deaf.

Lambert not only brought his deaf genetics over,

but the regional sign language of Kent, England.

This language evolved in Chilmark

as the deaf population grew.

It became Martha's Vineyard sign language or MVSL.

The language belong to both deaf and hearing people

throughout the island,

where it had become completely natural to use.

While all this was happening,

on the mainland of America,

In 1814, in Hartford Connecticut

a preacher named Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet

THE HISTORY OF ASL:

was visiting family.

He noticed one day his younger brothers and sisters

were not playing with a child.

Upon investigating

he learned that the child,

Alice Cogswell, was deaf.

Not knowing any sign language,

he attempted to communicate with her

by pointing to his hat,

and writing H-A-T in the dirt.

Alice was able to understand him.

Alice's father, a talented surgeon,

financed a trip for Gallaudet.

To visit Europe

and learn more about deaf education practices.

First, he visited the Braidwood school,

a family-run school with a focus on

using oral methods with deaf children.

The family refused to share their methods with Thomas.

While in England, he happened to meet

Abbé Roch-Ambroise Sicard.

The hearing man who was the Principal of

Institut Royal des Sourds-Muets,

a School for the Deaf in Bordeaux, France.

Accompanying Abbé Sicard,

was Laurent Clerc

and Jean Massieu,

two students of Abbé Sicard,

who were now educators along with him.

Abbé Sicard welcomed Thomas

to visit the school, and learn more.

Gallaudet actually had the foresight

to know he wouldn't be able to bring this

amazing knowledge back to America on his own,

and asked Laurent Clerc to return home with him.

In exchange for learning French sign language,

Thomas taught Clerc written English.

Upon returning to Connecticut in 1817,

they established the

American School for the Deaf, in Hartford.

Over time the deaf children from Martha's Vineyard

we're being educated at the new school, ASD.

Through time they moved, and settled to the mainland.

The Deaf population of Martha's Vineyard wained.

However, the French sign language

and the Martha's Vineyard Sign Language

became intertwined,

and became what is our present-day

American Sign Language.

I am proud to say that 179 years later,

I graduated from

American School for the Deaf.

The school and language is just as important today,

THE HISTORY OF ASL:

as it was all those years ago.

I hope you enjoyed this fascinating look at the history of

American Sign Language,

and those important people on a journey.