Originally Posted by ismi

The idea behind CS is this: it's possible for a hearing family to learn it quickly enough that their child will learn English (with cues) by modeling, just like a hearing child learns English or a DoD child learns ASL. Cued English uses three parts - hand shape, hand placement, and lip shape (or rather, all the parts of lip reading) to convey the phonemes that make up spoken English.

Obviously, the merits of CS are debatable. But children raised with CS speak English as their first language.