In America today the Sign Language that is used by deaf people is a mix of signs brought from France in the early 19th century. A man named Dr. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet taught a girl named Alice Cogsewell communication as an experiment. As a result of his success he was send abroad to study methods of Sign Language that was being used in England. In London Dr. Gallaudet got to meet the owner of the Signing school in Paris, Abbe Sicard. The school had been founded by a man named Abbe de L’Epee in 1755. Abbe was known as the invent

or of French Sign Language. He also published a book explaining both his sign system and his method of teaching the deaf. After Gallaudet had spent many months studying he return to America and brought another deaf instructor, Laurent Clerc, along with him. Many years later Gallaudet had started many schools in the United States. The first school was established in Hartford, Connecticut in 1817. Gallaudet passed his dream down to his son that established Gallaudet College, the first only college for the deaf. It is located in Washington and the charter for the school was signed in 1864 by President Abraham Lincoln.

We are all Americans and we all for the most part speak English. We also have many other languages that are spoken in America and they are all considered languages. All around the world different people speak different languages depending on who they are and what culture they belong to. Deaf is a culture and Sign Language is a language. The definition of culture: patterns, traits, products, attitudes, and intellectual/artistic activity associated with a population. As a culture is getting built and constantly growing there are little things that help people stick together and become a culture. The deaf communities have meetings that they call ASL dinners, Signing dinners, or Silent Supers. Other things they do as a social get together is Deaf coffee where they meet together at Starbucks or a similar place to chat. They do these things to get closer and feel more like a family. Because they cannot do exactly what non-deaf people do they have to accumulate many different things for themselves to make them able to participate in the normal entertaining things others get to participate in. For instance they make deaf-themed art work that they can hang in there houses. That has a sentimental meaning to them, like some cultures or religions put pictures and things up to represent their culture and beliefs. A lot of these art works can be seen on display at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf’s Dyer Arts Center in Rochester, New York. They produce their own movies a

Some topics in this essay:
Sign Language, Helen Keller, Silent Supers, Lister Hill, Radcliffe College, Middle Ages, Abraham Lincoln, , Language Sign, Rochester York, sign language, deaf people, helen keller, dominant language, culture sign language, considered language, language language, non-deaf people, culture sign, deaf culture, body language, sign language language,