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British Sign Language
British Sign Language (BSL) is a sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK), and is the first or preferred language among the Deaf community in the UK. Based on the percentage of people who reported 'using British Sign Language at home' on the 2011 Scottish Census, the British Deaf Association estimates there are 151,000 BSL users in the UK, of which 87,000 are Deaf. By contrast, in the 2011 England and Wales Census 15,000 people living in England and Wales reported themselves using BSL as their main language. People who are not deaf may also use BSL, as hearing relatives of deaf people, sign language interpreters or as a result of other contact with the British Deaf community. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands, body, face, and head. History The Beginning BSL is a creation of the British Deaf community, who have experienced discrimination over many centuries. All sign languages have origins in gestural communication developed between deaf ...
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L2 Speakers
A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language. A speaker's dominant language, which is the language a speaker uses most or is most comfortable with, is not necessarily the speaker's first language. For example, the Canadian census defines first language for its purposes as "the first language learned in childhood and still spoken", recognizing that for some, the earliest language may be lost, a process known as language attrition. This can happen when young children start school or move to a new language environment. Second-language acquisition The distinction between acquiring and learning was made by Stephen Krashen (1982) as part of his Monitor Theory. According to Krashen, the ''acquisition'' of a language is a natural process; whereas ''learning'' a language is ...
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Thomas Braidwood
Thomas Braidwood (1715–1806) was a Scottish educator, significant in the history of deaf education. He was the founder of Britain's first school for the deaf. Early life The fourth child of Thomas Braidwood and Agnes Meek, Braidwood was born in 1715 at Hillhead Farm, Covington, South Lanarkshire, Scotland. Professional career Teaching career in Scotland Braidwood originally established himself as a writing teacher, instructing the children of the wealthy at his home in the Canongate in Edinburgh. In 1760, he accepted his first deaf pupil, Charles Shirreff (1749–1829), who later became known as a painter of portrait miniatures. Shirreff, then ten years old, was the son of Alexander Shirreff, a wealthy wine merchant based at the port of Leith, who convinced Braidwood to undertake to teach the deaf-mute child to write. Braidwood changed his vocation from teaching hearing pupils to teaching the deaf, and renamed his building Braidwood's Academy for the Deaf and Dumb, the first ...
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Lip Reading
The lips are the visible body part at the mouth of many animals, including humans. Lips are soft, movable, and serve as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. Human lips are a tactile sensory organ, and can be an erogenous zone when used in kissing and other acts of intimacy. Structure The upper and lower lips are referred to as the "Labium superius oris" and "Labium inferius oris", respectively. The juncture where the lips meet the surrounding skin of the mouth area is the vermilion border, and the typically reddish area within the borders is called the vermilion zone. The vermilion border of the upper lip is known as the cupid's bow. The fleshy protuberance located in the center of the upper lip is a Tubercle (anatomy), tubercle known by various terms including the procheilon (also spelled ''prochilon''), the "tuberculum labii superioris", and the "labial tubercle". The vertical groove extending from the procheilon to the nasal septum ...
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American School For The Deaf
The American School for the Deaf (ASD), originally ''The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf'', is the oldest permanent school for the deaf in the United States, and the first school for children with disabilities anywhere in the western hemisphere. It was founded April 15, 1817, in West Hartford, Connecticut, by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Dr. Mason Cogswell, and Laurent Clerc and became a state-supported school later that year. History The first deaf school in the United States was short-lived: established in 1815 by Col. William Bolling of Goochland, Virginia, in nearby Cobbs, with John Braidwood (tutor of Bolling's two deaf children) as teacher, it closed in the fall of 1816. During the winter of 1818–1819, the American School for the Deaf became the first school of primary and secondary education to receive aid from the federal government when it was granted $300,000. As a result of its pivotal role in American deaf history, it also ...
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French Sign Language
French Sign Language (french: langue des signes française, LSF) is the sign language of the deaf in France and French-speaking parts of Switzerland. According to ''Ethnologue'', it has 100,000 native signers. French Sign Language is related and partially ancestral to Dutch Sign Language (NGT), Flemish Sign Language (VGT), Belgian-French Sign Language (LSFB), Irish Sign Language (ISL), American Sign Language (ASL), Quebec (also known as French Canadian) Sign Language (LSQ), Brazilian Sign Language (LSB, LGB or LSCB) and Russian Sign Language (RSL). History French Sign Language is frequently, though mistakenly, attributed to the work of Charles Michel de l'Épée (l'abbé de l'Épée). In fact, he is said to have discovered the already existing language by total accident; having ducked into a nearby house to escape the rain, he fell upon a pair of deaf twin sisters and was struck by the richness and complexity of the language that they used to communicate among themselves ...
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American Sign Language
American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by employing both manual and nonmanual features. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creole language, creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutination, agglutinative morphology. ASL originated in the early 19th century in the American School for the Deaf (ASD) in West Hartford, Connecticut, from a situation of language contact. Since then, ASL use has been propagated w ...
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Charles-Michel De L'Épée
Charles-Michel de l'Épée (; 24 November 1712 – 23 December 1789) was a philanthropic educator of 18th-century France who has become known as the "Father of the Deaf". Overview Charles-Michel de l'Épée was born to a wealthy family in Versailles, the seat of political power in what was then the most powerful kingdom of Europe. He studied to be a Catholic priest.L'Echo Magazine, le mensuel des sourds . Octobre 2012, p. 5 L'Épée then turned his attention toward charitable services for the poor, and, on one foray into the slums of Paris, he had a chance encounter with two young deaf sisters who communicated using a sign language.* Massieu, Jean; Laurent Clerc; and Roch Ambroise Cucurron Sicard. 181''Recueil des définitions et réponses les plus remarquables de Massieu et Clerc, sourds-muets, aux diverses questions qui leur ont été faites dans les séances publiques de M. l'abbé Sicard à Londres'' Londres, imprimé pour Massieu et Clerc, par Cox and Baylis, Great Queen Stre ...
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Old French Sign Language
Old French Sign Language (french: Vieille langue des signes française, often abbreviated as VLSF) was the language of the deaf community in 18th-century Paris at the time of the establishment of the first deaf schools. The earliest records of the language are in the work of the Abbé de l'Épée, who stumbled across two sisters communicating in signs and, through them, became aware of a signing community of 200 deaf Parisians. Records of the language they used are scant. Épée saw their signing as beautiful but primitive, and rather than studying or recording it, he set about developing his own unique sign system (''"langage de signes méthodiques"''), which borrowed signs from Old French Sign Language and combined them with an idiosyncratic morphemic structure which he derived from the French language. The term "Old French Sign Language" has occasionally been used to describe Épée's "systematised signs", and he has often been (erroneously) cited as the inventor of sign la ...
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André-Daniel Laffon De Ladebat
André-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat (30 November 1746 – 14 October 1829) was a French financier, politician and philanthropist. Early life André Laffon de Ladebat was born in Bordeaux, France, the son of commercial ship-owner Jacques-Alexandre Laffon de Ladebat. He studied in the Netherlands at the Protestant University of Franeker. In 1763, returning to France after a stay in England, de Ladebat entered his father's naval armaments business, and invested heavily in the development of an "Experimental Farm" in Pessac, and began to deforest the moors of Bordeaux. During the same period, he actively participated in the work of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences, as well as the Academy of Painting and Sculpture, of which he was president. De Ladebat distinguished himself through his writings on finance, political economy, and the improvement of living conditions. He is especially noted for his 1788 work "Discourse on the Necessity and the Means of Abolishing Slavery in the Coloni ...
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Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (December 10, 1787 – September 10, 1851) was an American educator. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first permanent institution for the education of the deaf in North America, and he became its first principal. When opened on April 15, 1817, it was called the "Connecticut Asylum (at Hartford) for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons," but it is now known as the American School for the Deaf. Biography He attended Yale University, earning his bachelor's degree in 1805, graduating at the age of seventeen, with highest honors, and then earned a master's degree at Yale in 1808. He engaged in many things such as studying law, trade, and theology. In 1814, Gallaudet graduated from Andover Theological Seminary after a two-year course of study. However, he declined several offers of pastorates, due to ongoing concerns about his health. His path in life was altered when he met Alice Cogswell, on May 25, 1814, the ...
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Laurent Clerc
Louis Laurent Marie Clerc (; 26 December 1785 – 18 July 1869) was a French teacher called "The Apostle of the Deaf in America" and was regarded as the most renowned deaf person in American Deaf History. He was taught by Abbé Sicard and deaf educator Jean Massieu, at the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets in Paris. With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, he co-founded the first school for the deaf in North America, the Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, on April 15, 1817, in the old Bennet's City Hotel, Hartford, Connecticut. The school was subsequently renamed the American School for the Deaf and in 1821 moved to 139 Main Street, West Hartford. The school remains the oldest existing school for the deaf in North America. Biography Laurent Clerc was born December 26, 1785, in La Balme-les-Grottes, Isère, a village on the northeastern edge of Lyon to Joseph-François Clerc and Marie-Élisabeth Candy in the small village of La Balme, where his father w ...
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Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard
Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard (; 20 September 1742 – 10 May 1822) was a French abbé and instructor of the deaf. Born at Le Fousseret, in the ancient Province of Languedoc (now the Department of Haute-Garonne), and educated as a priest, Sicard was made principal of a school for the deaf at Bordeaux in 1786, and in 1789, on the death of the Abbé de l'Épée, succeeded him at a leading school for the deaf which Épée had founded in Paris. He later met Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet while traveling in England, and invited him to visit the school. Sicard's chief works were his ''Eléments de grammaire générale'' (1799), ''Cours d'instruction d'un sourd-muet de naissance'' (1800) and ''Traité des signes pour l'instruction des sourds-muets'' (1808). The Abbé Sicard managed to escape any serious harm in the political troubles of 1792, and became a member of the Institute in 1795, but the value of his educational work was hardly recognized till shortly before his death at Paris. In 1803 ...
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