History of Sign Language

Vocabulary flashcards covering the historical development of sign language and deaf education across Spain, France, the United States, and Ghana.

Pedro Ponce de Leon

A 16th-century Spanish Benedictine monk considered the first deaf teacher; he taught speech to deaf people, demonstrated that they could understand written symbols by association, and invented signs to circumvent the vow of silence.

Juan Pablo de Bonet

A Spanish priest who taught deaf children of wealthy families and published the first book on teaching signs to deaf people in 1620, which featured a manual alphabet drawn in signs.

Abbe Charles Michel de l’Epee

An 18th-century Parisian educator who founded the first free school for deaf children in Paris in 1755, refining natural deaf signs and gestures into a full communicative language system capable of expressing abstraction.

Abbe Roch Ambroise Cucurron Sicard

The successor to Abbe de l’Epee who promoted manualism at his school for the deaf in Paris and trained Dr. Thomas Hopkin Gallaudet in sign language methods.

Oralism

An educational philosophy practiced in England that suppressed manual sign language and forced deaf individuals to learn and communicate through spoken English.

Manualism

An educational philosophy practiced in France that promoted and encouraged the use of sign language as an accessible medium of communication and instruction for deaf people.

French Sign Language (FSL)

A visual manual language that emerged from the French deaf cultural group, supported through manualism, which formed the linguistic structural basis of American Sign Language.

Dr. Thomas Hopkin Gallaudet

A Yale University graduate from Hartford, Connecticut who traveled to Europe in 1815 to investigate communication methods for the deaf, embraced French manualism, and co-founded the first American school for the deaf.

Laurent Clerc

A young deaf instructor from France who traveled to the United States with Dr. Gallaudet in 1817 to help establish and teach at the first American school for the deaf.

Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb

The school established in 1817 in the USA by Dr. Thomas Hopkin Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc that enabled sign language to flourish across America.

American Sign Language (ASL)

A visual language introduced to the USA in 1817 whose linguistic structures are derived from French Sign Language rather than spoken or signed English.

Dr. Foster

An educator who arrived in Ghana in 1957, addressed widespread societal stigmas against deafness, and founded the first foundation school for deaf children and adults using American Sign Language.

Ghana Mission School for the Deaf

The foundation school established on September 10, 1957 at Osu in Accra in a borrowed classroom from the Osu Presbyterian Middle School for Boys, which enrolled 13 deaf children and 11 deaf adults before moving to Akuapem-Mampong.

Ghanaian Sign Language (GhSL)

A sign language developed through the cultural adaptation of American Sign Language to local Ghanaian contexts, sharing similar phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics with ASL.