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Could be.
"English" signs? I'm confused.
- Thread starter CoffeeFiend
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Bebonang
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Gobae
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Actually American Sign Language results from the various "home sign languages" of the New England (Connecticut in particular) region merging with French Sign Language. This is due in large part because the original school's (American School for the Deaf) director was Laurent Clerc and used FSL at the school.
Additionally, further linguistic research has shown that Native American signs played no significant role in the foundation of ASL; especially since these signs are unique the Plains Indians whom the founders and of ASD didn't come into contact with.
Also of note is that the Native American sign language was designed to facilitate basic communication between tribes or while hunting and doesn't seem to be a full fledged language with a level of grammar sufficient to replace the spoken language; nor was it intended to do so since it users were hearing.
Bebonang
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In the old days, many Native people especially where there were Chiefs (Council members) or traders between tribes had to used Plains Indian Sign Language (Native Sign) to be able to understand what they wanted to say for trading or for talking about important subjects with other tribes for council meetings. Others like some Natives love to tell their stories in PISL. We want to bring the Native sign language back again as there were some old videos that show signs. But there were not many sign words that don't make the connections very well. It was different than the French Sign language from France coming to Connecticut for the Deaf school. I feel that there might be some sign words that are put with the French signs. If not, then we, Deaf Natives, need our own signs to mix with ASL. Often we use ASL a lot to communicate with ourselves as Deaf Natives and to communicate Deaf outside of our race.
You have to realize that there were Deaf Natives in the old days that use PISL or Indian Sign Language to communicate with other hearing people if they were maybe several Deaf Natives or one in the tribal group.
Most Deaf Natives were well hidden from hearing people except one that was told about a Deaf young man who held the rifle and refused to put the rifle down by the military soldier just because he could not hear what he was saying. Other hearing Natives tried to tell the soldier that he was deaf, but the soldier refused to listened to them and killed the Deaf Native. It is just like what we have with police officers who quickly killed for no reason at all. This is something we need to conserve or save our languages like PISL. We are going to try to save them. This is our tradition and no one should take away from our traditional languages what we had spoken for many centuries.
You have to realize that there were Deaf Natives in the old days that use PISL or Indian Sign Language to communicate with other hearing people if they were maybe several Deaf Natives or one in the tribal group.
Most Deaf Natives were well hidden from hearing people except one that was told about a Deaf young man who held the rifle and refused to put the rifle down by the military soldier just because he could not hear what he was saying. Other hearing Natives tried to tell the soldier that he was deaf, but the soldier refused to listened to them and killed the Deaf Native. It is just like what we have with police officers who quickly killed for no reason at all. This is something we need to conserve or save our languages like PISL. We are going to try to save them. This is our tradition and no one should take away from our traditional languages what we had spoken for many centuries.