Page:The philology of the sign language.djvu/4

 manual or the oral. There has been too much bitterness already expended on this subject, and all to no avail, for neither side can ever convince the other. The fact remains, however, that signs are used by the deaf, and if not permitted openly in school, they shoot up in the dark like "weeds," as a noted educator of the deaf called them recently, and the result is a curious and grotesque combination of furtive gestures and expressive faces which no one but the children themselves can understand. I might compare it to the old "Hog Latin" that I learned from my little playmates in school—the chief attraction of which was the thought that the teacher could not possibly understand what we were saying! But when, in after years, I was carefully guided to real Latin, and learned to appreciate its beauties and uses, I was very thankful indeed that I had not been left with my embryo knowledge of the Classics! The child's play-language was a "weed," of no practical use or beauty, but the wise teacher transformed it into a plant of helpfulness and joy.

To illustrate what I mean by the philology of the sign-language, let us examine a few concrete examples, beginning, perhaps, with family relations. The general sign for "man" or "male" is made by grasping with the right hand the brim of an imaginary hat. In the same way, "woman" or "female" is suggested by drawing the tip of the thumb down along the side of the cheek, where a woman's bonnet-string would naturally come. "Baby" is pictured by folding the arms and rocking them, one hand representing the baby's head. With these three signs as a beginning, we can easily represent a "father" as a man who holds a baby, and a "mother" as a woman who holds a baby—in the old times, babies were held in the arms more than in these days of sanitary and hygienic nurseries! How much more beautiful and expressive these two signs are, when properly made, than when abbreviated into the meaningless waving of fingers from the temple or from the chin. The two sets of gestures bear about the same relation to one another, as the sacred words "Father" and "Mother" to the flippant schoolboy's "Dad" and "Mom" or "Pa" and "Ma." In similar fashion the sign for "grandfather" and "grandmother" are made by tossing two generations of babies, and "ancestors," an indefinite number, always going backward to indicate previous time. A "son" is literally a "male baby," and a "daughter" a "female baby," no matter to what age they may attain. A "brother" is a "man," followed by the sign for "same" or "alike," made by the two 4