Nicaraguan Sign Language
Nicaragua on a World Map
Background
For years, the country of Nicaragua did not have a deaf community (Senghas and Pyers, 2005). For centuries, no national or widespread sign language existed in Nicaragua. Along with this, besides a few small-scale programs, there were no resources or formal educational programs designed specifically for deaf people (Senghas and Coppola, 2001). Because of these factors, deaf Nicaraguans frequently struggled to communicate with each other and the hearing community. The only means of communication for deaf Nicaraguans was individualized homesign systems, which are sets of meaningful gestures used to communicate with others (Richie et al., 2013). However, since homesigns are unique to the person using them, this method of communication is not always the most effective; two deaf individuals may use different homesigns for the same word, and hearing individuals who are not close with the individual may not be able to understand what the gestures are conveying. As a result, deaf Nicaraguans felt isolated from those around them, especially since oftentimes, there was only one deaf person within an extended family (Senghas and Pyers, 2005).
In 1946, the first ever school designed for special education children opened in the capital of Nicaragua, Managua. Enrollment of deaf and hard-of-hearing children grew exponentially from ten students in 1946 to fifty students in the early 1970s. Even though this school helped deaf and hard-of-hearing children with their oral communication during school hours, the first graduating class of the school reported that little communication between classmates occurred after school hours (Senghas and Pyers, 2005). So, communication between deaf individuals was still limited. In 1977, a much larger school was founded by the Nicaraguan government. It started off similar to the previous school: enrollment started at twenty-five deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and oralist pedagogy was the primary method of teaching (Senghas and Pyers, 2005). The enrollment continued to grow, and over the next few years, over four hundred students had enrolled at this school. This time, childen would hang out on the bus rides home and would stay in touch after school hours. Scholars consider this the first ever deaf community in Nicaragua (Senghas and Coppola, 2001). Over the next few years, more programs for deaf and hard-of-hearing children were established.
Early Stages of Nicaraguan Sign Language
At first, students in deaf and hard-of-hearing programs were not allowed to use gestures to communicate with each other. This is because they were being taught to lip-read Spanish, and teachers wanted the students to focus on this method of communication (Zall, 2020). However, this did not stop students from finding unique ways to have conversations with each other. Over time, the children developed gestures to communicate with their friends. They taught each other the meaning of different signs, and eventually, the teachers' disapproval shifted to curiousity. Eventually, children across a few of these programs were using very similar sets of gestures to communicate both inside and outside of the classroom.
As the next generation of students entered the schools, they promptly learned the signs that previous classes established. To the surprise of numerous adults, the younger children were able to pick up and expand on the language much faster than the previous set of students. This reflects a linguistical concept called reverse fluency, where younger individuals are able to reach a greater level of fluency compared to older individuals as a language develops (Zall, 2020). Another explanation for this deeper understanding of the language is the fact that the new set of students were still within the critical period for language development. The critical period is the window of time in which adequate experience is required to continue typical neural system development (Kuhl et al., 2005). If children do not experience sufficent languge acquisition , they will never fully grasp the grammatical and syntactic rules of a given language. Since many children apart of the initial group of students had already passed this period, they were unable to create grammatical structure with their signs. Younger groups, however, were able to formulate grammar rules and add on more rules as the years abided.
Nicaraguan Sign Language Today
Woman signing "see" (box a) and "play" (box b) in Nicaraguan Sign Language.
In 1986, a teacher apart of the hearing community formed a club in Managua to give deaf individuals of all ages an opportunity to interact with each other. This further spread the new signs and gestures throughout the deaf community. This group eventually became a national association for deaf Nicaraguans, and deaf Nicaraguans themselves took over the leadership roles of this association (Senghas and Pyers, 2005). By 1997, with the help from the Swedish Federation of the Deaf, the first complete dictionary was published. This dictionary showed how to sign Nicaraguan Sign Language, with instructions written in Spanish (Senghas and Pyers, 2005).
In the late 1990s, Nicaraguan Sign Language was recognized as a valid language. Today, this language has an abundant vocabulary and a set of grammar rules (Zall, 2020). Even though this language has stabilized immensely over the past few decades, there is still sometimes disagreement over what the "correct" sign is for a certain word. Of course, this is almost bound to happen with such a new language. When this occurs, signers can receive answers from an authority figure in the deaf community or a dictionary.
Nicaraguan Sign Language's Impact on Nicaraguan Culture
Once an isolated group of people who struggled to interact with those around them, deaf Nicaraguans became a community with a language that is widely understood. Teachers now teach deaf and hard-of-hearing students Nicaraguan Sign Language (Senghas and Pyers, 2005). Because of the availability of dictionaries, family and friends of deaf Nicaraguans can now learn the language to enhance interaction. In addition to stronger relationships amongst deaf individuals and their families and friends, the creation of this language has also allowed for intergenerational relationships between deaf Nicaraguans.
The emergence of a deaf community in Nicaragua has also prompted the discussion of deaf people's rights. Deaf association members have stepped into roles in local and national politics, where they continuously fight for the rights of deaf people in Nicaragua. Currently, one of the social movements in the Nicaraguan deaf community is to educate the hearing community on what it means to be deaf, since for so long, Nicaraguans had very minimal understanding on deafness. Many members of the hearing community base deaf people's level of hearing on how well they can use sign language. Since this language is still new and in general, language abilities do not correlate with hearing abilities, deaf Nicaraguans are fighting to end this assumption. Also, deaf Nicaraguans are fighting to cease the use of the word "mute" to describe them (Parks, 2012).
Implications Across Different Fields
Because of its extremely recent and unique emergence, Nicaraguan Sign Language has fascinated psychologists and linguists alike. Psychologists use Nicaraguan Sign Language as evidence for the constructivist theory of language acquisition. This theory argues that children acquire language through an innate desire to learn language along with social learning (Behrens, 2021). Since young children learned the language through practicing and using the signs with others, this supports the argument that social interaction is necessary to learn a language. The fact that young children acquired a deeper understanding of the language when compared to adults also provides further evidence for the existence of the aforementioned critical period. Linguists are interested in studying Nicaraguan Sign Language because it highlights how the brain influences language development in children (Kall, 2020). When learning a language, the brain automatically takes notes about which speech patterns occur the most often. The brain interprets frequently-used patterns and segments as important, so they are favored. Through the study of Nicaraguan Sign Language, linguists have noticed how this process is especially strong in young children’s brains, since they are able to acquire the language so quickly in comparison to older children and adults. Research done on this language has helped linguists identify that children’s brains are able to favor common speech patterns more so than adult brains (Zall, 2020).
Learn More
To learn more about specific signs used in Nicaraguan Sign Language, visit https://www.signwriting.org/archive/docs13/sw1270_NI_Nicaraguan_Sign_Language_Manual_3rd_Edition_2018_Kegl_NSLP_Part2_ENGLISH.pdf
To learn more about the grammatical structure of Nicaraguan Sign Language, visit http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.630.4745
To learn more about generational language differences in the early years of Nicaraguan Sign Language, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjBpWQ4tzso
Works Cited
Behren, Heike. 2021. “Constructivist Approaches to First Language Acquisition.”
Cambridge University Press 48. Retrieved 5 November, 2021
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Kuhl, Partica K., Conboy, Barbara T., Padden, Denise, Nelson, Tobey, and Pruitt,
Jessica. 2005. “Early Speech Perception and Later Language Development:
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228680596_Early_Speech_Perception_
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Parks, Elizabeth. 2012. “The Deaf People of Nicaragua.” SIL International. Retrieved 3
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Richie, Russell, Yang, Charles, and Coppola, Marie. 2013. “Modeling the Emergence of
Lexicons in Homesign Systems.” Topics in Cognitive Science 6. Retrieved 2
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Senghas, Ann and Coppola, Marie. 2001. “Children Creating Language:
How Nicaraguan Sign Language Acquired a Spatial Grammar.” Psychological
Science 12(4). Retrieved 2 November, 2021 https://siegler.tc.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Children_Creating_Language_How_Nicaraguan_Sign_Lan.pdf.
Senghas, Richard J., Ann Senghas, and Jennie Pyers. 2005. The Emergence of
Nicaraguan Sign Language: Questions of Development, Acquisition, and
Evolution. Retrieved November 2, 2021
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260120196_The_emergence_of_Nicara
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Zall, Carol. 2020. “The origin of Nicaraguan Sign Language tells us a lot about language creation.”
TheWorld. Retrieved 3 November, 2021
https://theworld.org/stories/2020-09-29/origin-nicaraguan-sign-language-tells-us-l