ASL

The history of American Sign Language started in 1814 with Dr. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a minister from Connecticut. It began when Dr. Gallaudet befriended a young deaf girl named Alice Cogswell. Dr. Gallaudet noticed that Alice was very intelligent despite the fact that she couldn’t speak or hear, and he decided he wanted to teach Alice how to communicate. Gallaudet didn’t know much about educating deaf people and struggled to teach Alice.  However, Gallaudet was determined to teach the young girl and with the support of the community received enough money to go to Europe where there was a strong history of deaf education. After spending some time in Europe learning teaching methods from instructors at the National Institute for Deaf-Mutes, Gallaudet and a European deaf instructor, Laurent Clerc, headed back to the U.S. and started the American School for the Deaf.  It was the first public free deaf school in the U.S. At the school Gallaudet and Clerc taught French Sign Language but they evolved the language to encompass the various signing systems created by the American deaf communities that the students had created themselves. Over time the sign language evolved into what we now call American Sign Language.

  

Sources:

“History of American Sign Language.” Start ASL,  www.startasl.com/history-of-american-sign-language_html.

Vicars, William G. “ American Sign Language: ASL History.” Lifeprint, 1 Jan. 2001, www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/history1.htm.