Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Susan Meisalas/Magnum Photos
A deaf girl using Nicaraguan Sign Language at the Esquelitas de Bluefields, Managua, Nicaragua, 1999.

Lately, I’ve been impressed with the leadership of young people. I’ve told friends, “Wherever they lead, I’m going to follow.” One thing I like about young people is that they don’t know what’s impossible, so they just set about to do it.

In Nicaragua several decades ago, it was the youngest children who began to invent a language. The older children followed, and then, eventually, the adults.

Shoshi Parks has the story at Atlas Obscura, “Of all the changes within Nicaragua to come out of the overthrow of the Somoza regime by the Sandinistas in 1979, perhaps the least anticipated was the birth of a new language.

“Nicaraguan Sign Language is the only language spontaneously created, without the influence of other languages, to have been recorded from its birth. And though it came out of a period of civil strife, it was not political actors but deaf children who created the language’s unique vocabulary, grammar, and syntax.

“When the Sandinista National Liberation Front gained power, they embarked on what has been described as a ‘literacy crusade,’ developing programs to promote fluency in reading Spanish. One such initiative was opening the first public school for deaf education, the Melania Morales Special Education Center, in Managua’s Barrio San Judas. According to Ann Senghas, a professor of psychology at Barnard College who has studied NSL, it was the first time in the history of the country that deaf children were brought together in large numbers.

“These children, who ranged in age from four to 16, had no experience with sign language beyond the ‘home signs’ they used with family members to communicate broad concepts. American Sign Language, which has existed since the early 19th century, is used throughout the Americas and is often considered a ‘lingua franca’ among deaf people whose first sign language is a national or regional one. But the first Nicaraguan deaf school did not use ASL or any signs at all. Instead, they focused on teaching children to speak and lip-read Spanish. …

“The Sandinistas’ focus on Spanish literacy resulted in the immersion of deaf students in Spanish speaking and reading skills. But while the country’s deaf children were being taught Spanish inside the classroom, outside the classroom they were spontaneously developing their own method of signed communication. …

“All languages have grammar and syntax, but the first children at Managua’s deaf school had no model for how a language worked because they had been isolated from signed, spoken, and written language all their lives, notes [James Shepard-Kegl, co-director of the Nicaraguan Sign Language Project, which administers programs to empower the Nicaraguan deaf community through the use of sign language].

“When the children interacted, instead of adapting their signs to fit an existing language, they developed something unique. While the older students had more life experience, it was actually the younger kids that drove the language’s development. ‘As you get older, your language instincts tend to diminish,’ says Shepard-Kegl. ‘A lot of those older kids weren’t generating grammar the way little kids did. They copied the grammar the little kids generated.’ …

“The critical mass needed to spontaneously develop Nicaraguan Sign Language only occurred with the opening of Melania Morales. Within a few years, teachers and education officials recognized that something incredible was happening at the school.” More at Atlas Obscura, here.

Photo: Susan Meisalas/Magnum Photos
Deaf students using Nicaraguan sign language at the Esquelitas de Bluefields, Managua, Nicaragua, 1999.