You can also see all the Unusualverse infographics here.
Transcription for people with low vision or blindness:
- it is known to exist for 2,500 years: Plato wrote Cratylus dialogue in 360 B.C. where he says: ‘Suppose that we had no voice or tongue, and wanted to communicate with one another, should we not, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hands and head and the rest of the body?’.
- They have survived genocides: Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, tried to forbid marriage between deaf people, Sign Language was banned in schools in Europe since 1880 and 17,000 deaf people were sterilized during World War II.
- A baby can use it from 6 months: any baby can use Sign Language from six months before he controls the phonoarticulator device around twelve months. So each day more babies learn from hearing families.
- There are 138 Sign Languages: and these are just some of those catalogued in the Ethnologue. Some experts point out that there are as many Sign Languages as there are oral languages, that is, thousands of Sign Languages.
- They have the kinematic capacity: that is, Sign Languages have the ability to create the sensation of movement and visual rhythm in a narrative.
Sources:
- http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/gu001616.pdf
- http://www.start-american-sign-language.com/alexander-graham-bell.html
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_International_Congress_on_Education_of_the_Deaf
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaf_People_in_Hitler%27s_Europe
- http://www.babysignlanguage.com/basics/history
- http://www.ethnologue.com/18/subgroups/deaf-sign-language-0/
- Bauman, H. D. L. (2003). Redesigning literature: The cinematic poetics of American Sign Language poetry. Sign Language Studies, 4(1), 34-47.
