In everyday conversation, we often speak with our hands to illustrate what we have to say. But, what if we only had our hands to tell the story? A brief history on American Sign Language. ASL is a shorter version of saying American Sign Language and is often used todays conversation. The 1800’s ASL began to form when deaf education was being introduced. When Dr. Gallaudet had a neighbor who was deaf, he became interested in communicating with her. This is very beneficial to Americans today considering we have 500,000- 2,000,00 deaf people living in America. All Sign Language is a language that is constantly changing up. American Sign Language first originated in the 1800 when Dr. Gallaudet had wanted to communicate with Alice Cogswell, a young deaf girl. They had noticed how smart she was. She just couldn't communicate with others. To learn more about how to communicate with Alice Dr.Gallaudet took a boat trip fifty two days long to Europe to learn how they were doing there signs. While in Europe, he met Laurent Clerc, who was a deaf educator decided to come back to America with Gallaudet. In 1817 they built up the American School for the Deaf in Hartford ,Connecticut. This school grew so students from all around America were coming to get an education they …show more content…
Sign Language is also a universal language meaning something in America may not mean the same thing in China. For example, the middle finger in America is something rude,but in China it means father. Also in ASL there are some signs that may look similar but are totally different words. When speaking in ASL one doesn't use proper grammar. For example, one might say, “Hello my name is Adriana Luna” but in ASL it would look like “Hi I, Adriana Luna”. If a person ever goes to the Abraham Lincoln Memorial and closely look at Abraham’s hand he can see that Abraham is doing the signs for A and L in his hands upon his