The position of the fingers resembles the printed letters of the alphabet to some extent. There is evidence that the manual alphabet did exist during the early Christian era, because there are drawings of hand positions in the Latin Bibles of the 10th century. It is known that persons who lived in enforced silence, such as monks of the Middle Ages, used finger spelling as a means of communication. .
Ludwig van Beethoven was a famous German composer and pianist. He started going deaf at the age of 28 and by the time he was 49, he could no longer hear at all. Even though he continued to get worse, he kept composing music. Beethoven died in 1827 when he was 57 years old. He is now buried in Central Friedhof, Vienna. Another famous deaf person was Helen Keller. Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama on June 27, 1880. She was only 18 months old was she became deaf and blind at the same time. March of 1887, her parents hired Anne Sullivan a 20 year old graduate from the Perkins School for the blind to come and work with Helen. Helen wanted to go to college. In 1990, she started at Radcliffe College and graduated from cum laude in 1904. That made her the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college. Helen stayed at Radcliffe and started a writing career. She wrote many 12 books and many articles on blindness, deafness, social issues and women's rights. Helen never forgot the needs of others who were blind and deaf-blind and she always lent her support to the establishment of the Helen Keller National Center for the Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults. She died on June 1, 1968, at the age of 87. Senator Lister Hill said in her eulogy, "She will live on, one of the few, immortal names not born to die. Her spirit will endure as long as man can read and stories can be told of the woman who showed the world there are no boundaries to courage and faith.".
We are all Americans and we all for the most part speak English.
