THE SIGN LANGUAGE
The Abbe (Charles Michel) de l'Epee is regarded as the inventor of the Sign Language of the deaf. He was born in 1712 at Varsailles where his father was an architect in the royal service. Rejected as a candidate for holy orders because he refused to sign certain doctrinal tenets he studied law and was admitted as an advocate in Paris. Three years later, however he followed his greater inclination and was finally accepted in the priesthood.
In the course of his priestly labors he came across two deaf-mute sisters who had been partly educated by one Father Vanin by means of pictures. On Father Vanin's death their education came to a halt and the Abbe de l'Epee, moved by their condition resolved to take up and continue it. He found other deaf children and undertook their education. Thus his life work began and henceforth, not only his energies, but his private means, were devoted to the education of the deaf.
To carry out his plan he conceived the idea of using natural signs, and these not being sufficient to answer the purpose of grammatical syntax he invented others until he had systematized a vocabulary of considerable size. Many of his signs, of course, were arbitrary but the majority were based on natural pantomime. He published a volume, and later a revised edition of the same, describing his methods and system of signs.
Altho he taught some of his pupils to articulate, he believed signs were the vernacular of the deaf and hence essential to their comprehension and translation of ideas into language.
He founded a school for the deaf in Paris in 1760, his work being entirely philanthropic. Previous efforts to educate the deaf had been sporadic and confined to scions of the nobility, but de l'Epee seems to have been the first to open his school to the poor and he carried on his labors without expectation of pecuniary reward. De l'Epee died in 1789 and was succeeded as head of the school by the Abbe (Roch Ambroise Cucurron)
