The origin of Nicaraguan Sign Language tells us a lot about language creation
In the mid-1980s, linguists stumbled upon a kind of natural experiment on language creation — a sign language being used by deaf children in Managua that was only a few years old.
The World
September 29, 2020 · 12:45 PM EDT
By Carol Zall
In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a dictator whose family had been in power in Nicaragua since 1936.
The new government had big plans, including a massive literacy campaign that was launched in 1980. They supported special education in public schools, including provision for deaf children. This was new for Nicaragua: Previously, most deaf children were completely isolated.
Suddenly, for the first time, there was a community of deaf kids all trying to communicate with each other as hundreds were brought together in a few schools in Managua, the capital. It was here that the new language — Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL), or Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua (ISN) — would emerge.
Today, Nicaraguan Sign Language has its own complex grammar and a broad vocabulary. And it has helped fill in some gaps in our knowledge about how languages evolve, how they work, and the role a community plays in all of that — especially when it comes to the youngest learners. But in the mid-1980s, linguists were just learning of NSL's existence.
In 1986, Judy Shepard-Kegl, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained linguist with expertise in signed languages, was invited by the country’s Ministry of Education to observe the children at the schools in Managua. Shepard-Kegl thought it would just be one trip. Her first stop was a vocational school.
Judy Shepard-Kegl, linguist, University of Southern Maine
“When I walked in, I said, ‘I'm a linguist, I study sign language, what do you want from me?’ And they pointed to a bunch of kids milling around on a little basketball court in front of us and said, ‘We want to understand what they're talking about.’”
At school, the children were taught lip-reading and Spanish and were told not to use gestures. However, by the mid-1980s, teachers observed that students were signing to each other, communicating with their hands. Until then, there wasn’t any official sign language in Nicaragua.
More:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-09-29/origin-nicaraguan-sign-language-tells-us-lot-about-language-creation