French Sign Language Thomas Gallaudet

The roots of ASL can be traced back to France in the 1700s. A French cleric, Charles-Michel de l’Epee, visited a mother with twin daughters who were both Deaf. He tried to communicate with the daughters, but they both ignored him. He expressed his irritation to the girls’ mother, who explained that she also had difficulty communicating and educating her daughters. Because of this, de l’Epee decided to tutor the girls himself. By 1771, he opened a school for the Deaf, which had a population of 30 students. By 1789, de l’Epee had a total enrollment of 100 students in three schools, such as the Institut Royal des Sourds-Muets, or the Royal Institution for the Deaf in Paris (Tabak, page 8-9).

De l’Epee taught what is now known as French Sign Language

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and later moved to Hartford, Connecticut. After receiving both his bachelor’s degree and graduate degree from Yale University, he later matriculated to the Andover Theological Seminary. After graduating from the seminary in 1814, Gallaudet planned to serve as a preacher. However, while visiting his family in Hartford one evening, Gallaudet noticed that a young child was not playing with the rest of the children. He later learned that the girl, Alice Cogswell, was deaf. He tried to communicate with her by gesturing to his hat and writing H-A-T on the ground, and she understood. Her father, Dr. Mason Cogswell—a wealthy physician—then asked Gallaudet to travel to Europe to study the Europeans’ methods to teach the deaf, because at this time there were no deaf schools in the United

Abbe Sicard welcomed Gallaudet to learn their teaching methods—which stressed signing— and soon Gallaudet was back in Paris. For three months, he studied under Jean Massieu and Laurent Clerc, deaf men who had attended the Royal Institution for the Deaf in Paris and eventually taught there.

Gallaudet learned sign language under Clerc and offered him a teaching position at the school he planned to found, which Clerc accepted. During their two-month trip back to America, Clerc taught Gallaudet sign, and Gallaudet taught him English. Finally, on April 15, 1817, they founded America’s first school for the Deaf, the American School for the Deaf in Hartford. In 1864, Gallaudet also helped found Gallaudet University, then known as Gallaudet College, one of the world’s leading institutions of higher learning for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Gallaudet supported the adoption of signed language during a time when people stressed the teaching of speech to the deaf. “Signed language is unique and universal, Gallaudet believed, because it is language—or, more precisely, is thought—made visible” (Tabak, page