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Sign Language is the form of communication of deaf people. There are a lot of forms of sign language, but we’re going to focus on the American Sign Language (ASL).
ASL is used mainly in America and some parts of Canada. The estimated amounts of people who use this language vary from 100,000 to 500,000. American Sign Language can be said to have started in Europe. Abbe De l’Epee created a first free school for deaf people, where they used the first form of the language, which was modified in later years. De l’Epee developed the language so he could help people learn French. After some time of using this language, Abbe Roch-Ambroise Sicard modified the language to make it easier to learn.
In 1817, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet founded America’s first school for deaf people. Shortly after that, other people started learning the language and opened more schools. In 1863, there were twenty-two schools in the United States.
Now a days, we
are lucky to have the most complete sing language systems of the world, and
we owe all that to the French sign system. Many families in the world know this
language, and some of them modify it to use it with their family.
Many people are still interested in learning sign language, or maybe making
a sign language of their own. And thanks to the wish of learning it, ASL is
the fourth most used language in the United States.