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A Brief History...
Linguistic history was made
in 1996 in Bluefields, Nicaragua. It is extremely rare, from
an historic perspective, that a newly developed language receives
"a written form" almost simultaneously with the birth
of the language itself. Yet, although Nicaraguan Sign Language
is a newly evolving language, because of SignWriting, it may become a "written
language" while it evolves.
Prior to the Nicaraguan revolution in 1979, Deaf people throughout
Nicaragua lived in isolation from one another. In the early 1980's,
however, Deaf children from Managua were enrolled in schools
for the Deaf for the first time. In 1986, at the request of the
Nicaraguan Ministry of Education, linguist Dr. Judy Shepard-Kegl traveled to Managua
where she evaluated the sign language phenomenon that was occurring
in the school system. It was evident that even though the official
philosophy at that time was to teach lip reading rather than
sign language, students were communicating manually with each
other anyway. Judy recognized that a new sign language was evolving
in the Deaf school population. In just a few years, a complex
and sophisticated human language system came into being. There
were, in 1996, in excess of 800 speakers of Nicaraguan Sign Language
living in and around Managua.
Managua is in urbanized western Nicaragua,
but the town of Bluefields is in the eastern rain forest region.
Services for Deaf children in Bluefields were virtually non-existent,
until the summer of 1995, when Judy and her husband, James Shepard-Kegl, coordinated an intensive
sign language immersion program, using Deaf teachers from Managua.
A second workshop was held in January, 1996. The project is called
"Escuelita (Little School) de Bluefields."
And SignWriting is playing an important role. A skilled SignWriting
instructor, Darline Clark Gunsauls, traveled to Nicaragua to
teach SignWriting literacy to Deaf children at Escuelita de Bluefields
from June 15-July 17,1996. See the following pages for Darline's
Teacher's Report and
photos.
In August, 1996, the BBC from England came to the Escuelita
de Bluefields to document the students' work, to be aired on
British TV's "See-Hear" program.
In November, 1998, a second school for
Deaf children, in Condega, Nicaragua, called the "Escuelita
de Condega" was established in the flood-ravaged area hit
by Hurricane Mitch. Read
James Kegl's stimulating email messages for his detailed
accounts of finding deaf people, and bringing them to school.
Literature is continually being translated
into Nicaraguan Sign Language, and written in SignWriting for
the children to read, including Babar, Taily-Po, Little Engine
that Could, Anansi the Spider, Trojan Horse, Odysseus and the
Cyclops, Odysseus and Circe, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, Moby Dick, and
more.
For more information contact:
James & Judy Shepard-Kegl
Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects
Email: kegl@maine.rr.com
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...two schools for the Deaf in Nicaragua...
Escuelita de Bluefields
Escuelita de Condega
...were founded by...
...and are coordinated by...
Nicaraguan Sign Language Projects, Inc.
James Shepard-Kegl, Coordinator
52 Whitney Farms Road
North Yarmouth, Maine, 04097, USA
(207) 846-8801 voice or tty
(207) 846-8688 fax
Email: kegl@maine.rr.com
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...SignWriting
in Nicaragua Directory...
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