The language is of special interest to linguists, because it allows them to study … It's got internal consistency,” Shepard-Kegl said. “When you watched these guys signing, it just became very clear, it was like somebody just wiped away the fog, and you could see the grammar right there in front of you.”. They're analyzing it, and they are finding structure there, even sometimes when you didn't intend to put it there. Please click below to consent to the use of this technology while browsing our site. That means that language is so integral to our human experience that basically give it half a chance to emerge, and it will.”. It’s an opportunity that owes much to the birth of NSL occuring in the 1980s, when researchers had access to video cameras and could accurately record exactly what was happening. “You start building a vocabulary this way,” he says. And because there was a new group of kids entering the elementary school in Managua each year, researchers have been able to compare successive generations of signers, to see how the language has been changing over time. The kids were the first to enrol in Nicaragua… We couldn’t have done it without your support. Your donation directly supported the critical reporting you rely on, the consistent reporting you believe in, and the deep reporting you want to ensure survives.Â, a dictator whose family had been in power in Nicaragua since 1936, Virtual schooling poses extra challenges for English-language learners, Artist Christine Sun Kim on ‘deaf rage,’ the Super Bowl and the power of sound, Florida teen girls step up to translate Indigenous Mayan languages, 'The death of American exceptionalism’: Views from abroad on US Capitol attackÂ, From Sudan, Ethiopian refugees tell their stories, Latino communities targeted by disinformation ahead of Georgia’s Senate runoffs, 'Georgia, all eyes are on you': Activists galvanize Latino voters ahead of runoffsÂ. They had a real language. Marco Werman: So, how exactly does Nicaraguan Sign Language tell us more about the human history of language and communication? This occurred at a number of schools in western Nicaragua. This was new for Nicaragua: Previously, most deaf children were completely isolated. Carol Zall: As part of this drive for literacy, the government started providing special education for deaf kids in public schools. Babies are not given grammar lessons and yet they reliably learn grammar because they have inherent expectations about how languages function, says Shepard-Kegl. This was brand new for Nicaragua. 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 … Bell argued that if deaf people were allowed to communicate via sign language, their isolation from the hearing population would lead to more deaf marriages and, consequently, a larger deaf population. Carol Zall: That means that children have an outsized influence on language. Until then, there wasn’t any official sign language in Nicaragua.Â. In 1979, the Sandinista National Liberation Front overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle, a dictator whose family had been in power in Nicaragua since 1936.Â. Courtesy of Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects, Inc. Shepard-Kegl spent whole days watching the students in their classes, and the kids became curious about what she was doing. Carol Zall: Studying these changes helps researchers test theories of why languages develop the way they do. They now are based in the USA but run Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects.. Tio Antonio – Antonio, a chef originally from Valencia, Spain, lives and works in Granada, Nicaragua running the Cafe de las Sonrisas and other projects providing employment … It wasn't a language, but their brains filled in the holes of what was missing. Today, however, we know a little more, thanks to a language that only came into being recently: Nicaraguan Sign Language. Judy Shepard-Kegl: And there, that’s when I saw something very different. It want influenced by any existing language — spoken or signed — and instead is a completely novel language, brought about by children whose previous linguistic repertoire was limited to unsystematic gestures. Carol Zall has our report. “Kids are good at learning certain things, and since kids are the primary language learners, they are the ones who are selecting for what stays in language, essentially. Kids “don’t know what the [grammatical] rule is but [they] expect that there is a rule.” In Managua’s first deaf school, there was no model and no one to guide the children in sign language and still a language was created in a way never observed before. Carol Zall: Judy concluded that what she was looking at was the emergence of a brand new language. “That was the stimulus, that was the input to the younger kids. Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense, or Nicaraguan Sign Language, is a sign language that was spontaneously invented by deaf schoolchildren in Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s. 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.". This educational strategy, known as “oralism,” has long been a subject of debate in deaf education, one that was particularly fierce in the United States where ASL originated. Carol Zall: The younger children were communicating much more fluently than the older kids. the fact that it is an unusual situation to begin with — NSL is a new language that is emerging in the absence of influence of other already existing languages Offer available only in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico). When children learn a language, they don’t just passively absorb words. Newscaster: “Victorious Sandinista rebels marched into Nicaragua’s capital city of Managua today.”. In this respect, Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) is quite unique. “To my knowledge,” Senghas writes, “there has not been another case of linguists and psycholinguists documenting the birth of a language on a community-wide scale.”. Yuri Shepard-Kegl: My name is Yuri Shepard-Kegl. There was a left-wing insurrection in central America. It was as if fluency was going backwards. Flaherty believes that the earliest generations of NSL signers wanted to make sure they were understood — larger signs are easier to see. Every language has a unique story, but Nicaraguan Sign Language is pretty special. Sign up for our daily newsletter TOP OF THE WORLD and get the big stories we’re tracking delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Related: Curious Kids: Why do we say 'OK'? In this episode of Language Stories, we're exploring the story of Nicaraguan Sign Language. But the first Nicaraguan deaf school did not use ASL or any signs at all. For Shepard-Kegl, the way NSL emerged has reinforced her belief that humans have an innate capacity for language: As long as we’re given the right stimulus, at the right time, our brains will produce language. One such initiative was opening the first public school for deaf education, the Melania Morales Special Education Center, in Managua’s Barrio San Judas. We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world’s hidden wonders. Stokoe also questions assertions that the language has emerged entirely without outside influence, from (for example), Spanish or ASL. Nicaraguan Sign Language similarly developed in a vacuum. Carol Zall: When the kids realized that Judy was studying them, they befriended her, started teaching her their signs. 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. Molly Flaherty: Since kids are the primary language learners, they are the ones who are selecting for what stays in language, essentially. It wasn't a language, but their brains filled in the holes of what was missing. Nicaraguan Sign Language (ISN) Nicaraguan Sign Language (ISN) first emerged in the 1970s when deaf children were brought together in schools in western Nicaragua. That's the kind of formula for this.”. For all that linguists have learned from the study of Nicaraguan Sign Language, perhaps most important is the proof it has provided for a controversial theory of language. Smaller-scale isolated deaf-education programs had existed previously in 20th-century Nicaragua, Shepard-Kegl says, but the critical mass needed to spontaneously develop Nicaraguan Sign Language only occurred with the opening of Melania Morales. Independent creation of children older kids the world 's hidden wonders idiom about how languages function says! 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