The inestimable value of speech-reading and the practicability of its
acquisition under favorable conditions is a matter of common experience
and observation but justice to the deaf requires a recognition of the
fact that speech-reading has its limitations. Certain English words,
chiefly short ones, are practically alike to the speech-reader and the
context may fail sometimes to give a clew. It is necessary, at times, in
communicating with even expert speech-readers, to have recourse to
writing or oral spelling to convey the names of persons, places,
technical terms, etc., not in common use. Moreover, it is convenient to
have accurate and rapid means of conversation under unfavorable
conditions as to light and distance, or when from any cause the deaf
person's voice cannot be heard.
Writing is slow, inconvenient, and often impossible. Writing upon the
palm of the hand was proposed by the Abbe Deschamps in 1778, as utilizing
the sense of touch, and was used in darkness by him as a substitute for
speech, but it is neither accurate nor rapid. Writing in the air[1] with
the finger is also slow and uncertain, while the action is unpleasantly
conspicuous.
[Footnote 1: The brilliant but wily Sicard, whose "show" pupils were
accustomed to honoring drafts at sight in appropriate responses to all
sorts of questions, acting upon the motto, _Mundus vult decipi, ergo
decipiatur_, schooled certain pupils in deciphering writing in the air,
and was thus prepared, in emergencies at his public exhibitions, to
convey intimations of the answers, while supposed to be using "signs" in
putting questions.]
Finger-spelling would appear to be a far more convenient, easy, rapid,
and accurate adjunct to speech or substitute for it than writing.
It is a common error to consider the ordinary manual alphabets as
deaf-mute alphabets and finger-spelling as the sign-language of the deaf.
Finger-spelling is to the deaf a borrowed art. It is used by many of the
educated deaf and their friends as a substitute for the sign-language,
and it enables them also to supply the deficiencies of the sign-language
by incorporating words from written language. Scagliotti, of Turin,
devised a system of initial signs[2] which begin with letters of the
manual alphabet, and Dr. Isaac Lewis Peet, of New York, has made a
similar application of manual letters to signs to suggest words of our
written language to the initiated deaf. But it should not be forgotten
that practice in finger-spelling is practice in our language.
[Footnote 2: _Quatrieme Circulaire_, Paris, 1836, p. 16. Carton's
_Memoire_, 1845, p. 73.]
The origin of finger-spelling is not known. Barrois, a distinguished
orientalist, in his _Dactylologie et Langage primitif_[3], ingeniously
traces evidences of finger-spelling, from the Assyrian antiquities down
to the fifteenth century upon monuments of art.
[Footnote 3: Barrois: _Dactylologie et langage primitif_, Paris, 1850,
Firmin Didot freres.]
The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans were familiar with manual
arithmetic and finger-numeration, as quaint John Bulwer shows by numerous
citations in his _Chironomia_ (1644). The earliest finger-alphabets
extant appear to have been based upon finger-signs for numbers, as, for
instance, that given by the Venerable Bede (672-735) in his _De Loguela
per Gestum Digitorum sive Indigitatione_, figured in the Ratisbon edition
of 1532.[4] Monks and others who had special reason to prize secret and
silent modes of communication, beyond doubt invented and used many forms
of finger alphabets as well as systems of manual signs.[5] The oldest
plates in the library of the National Deaf Mute College are found in the
_Thesaurus Artificiosae Memoriae_ of frater Cosmas P. Rossellius of
Florence, printed in 1579, which gives three forms of one-hand alphabets.
Bonet's work[6] of 1620 gives one form of the one hand Spanish manual
alphabet, which contains forms identical with certain letters in the
alphabets of 1579. This was introduced into France by Pereire and taught
to the Abbe de l'Epee by Saboureux de Fontenay, the gifted pupil of
Pereire. The good Abbe however continued to use a French[7] two-hand
alphabet which, he had learned when a child and which he said all
school-children knew. He mentions also a Spanish alphabet in part
requiring both hands, and remarks that different nations have different
manual alphabets. The Abbe Deschamps, a rival of De l'Epee, made use of a
finger alphabet in teaching the deaf to speak, which was not adapted to
rapid use. John Bulwer, in his _Chirologia, or the Naturall Language of
the Hand_, printed in 1644, figures five manual alphabets for secret
communication.
[Footnote 4: The library of the New York Institution contains a copy of
this very rare edition, bearing the title _Abacus atque velustissima
Latinorum per digitos manusque numerandi (quinetiam loquendi)
consuetudo_, etc., Ratisbonae, 1532.]
[Footnote 5: For an exhaustive account of the gesture speech in
Anglo-Saxon monasteries and of the Cistercian monks, who were
under rigid vows of silence, see F. Kluge: _Zur Geschichte der
Zeichensprache.--Angelsachsische indicia Monaslerialia,_ in
_International Zeitschrift fur Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft,_ II. Band,
I. Halfte. Leipzig, 1885.]
[Footnote 6: _Reduccion de lasletras y arte para ensenar a hablar los
mudos_, 1620. The writer is under obligations to Sr. Santos M. Robledo,
of the Ministry of Public Works and Education, for advance sheets of the
reprint in beautiful facsimile of this rare work ordered by the Spanish
Government in 1881.]
[Footnote 7: The Abbe de l'Epee did not master the Spanish alphabet,
and, attaching but little importance to manual spelling, he was unsparing
in his criticism of _Messieurs the dactylologists_, but by "the irony of
fate" this alphabet occupies a face of the pedestal of one statue to his
memory, and in another statue the good Abbe is represented either as
receiving this alphabet from the skies or as devoutly using it.]
The first alphabet which appears to have been devised expressly for use
in teaching the deaf is that of George Dalgarno, of Aberdeen (1626-1687),
given in his remarkable philosophical treatise, _Didascalocophus, or the
Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor_, Oxford, 1680. A facsimile of this alphabet is
given in the _Annals_, vol. ix., page 19. Words are spelled by touching
with your finger the positions indicated, either upon your hand or upon
the hand of your interlocutor. An alphabet of the same character,
however, was not unknown at an earlier date. For Bulwer, in 1648, says:
"A pregnant example of the officious nature of the Touch in supplying the
defect or temporall incapacity of the other senses we have in one Master
_Babington_ of _Burntwood_ in the County of _Essex_, an ingenious
gentleman, who through some sicknesse becoming _deaf_, doth
notwithstanding feele words, and as if he had an eye in his finger, sees
signes in the darke; whose Wife discourseth very perfectly with him by a
strange way of Arthrologie or Alphabet contrived on the joynts of his
Fingers; who taking him by the hand in the night, can so discourse with
him very exactly; for he feeling the joynts which she toucheth for
letters, by them collected into words, very readily conceives what shee
would suggest unto him. By which examples [referring to this case and to
that of an abbot who became _deaf, dumb_, and _blind_, who understood
writing traced upon his naked arm] you may see how ready upon any
invitation of Art, the _Tact_ is, to supply the defect, and to officiate
for any or all of the other senses, as being the most faithfull sense to
man, being both the _Founder_, and _Vicar generall_ to all the rest."[8]
[Footnote 8: _Philocophus_: or, THE DEAFE and Dumbe Mans Friend. By I.B.
[John Bulwer] sirnamed the _Chorosopher_. London, 1648. Pp. 106,107.]
Dr. Alexander Graham Bell has modified the Dalgarno alphabet, and has
made considerable use of it in its modified form as figured in the
_Annals_, vol. xxviii., page 133. He esteems it highly for certain
purposes, especially as employing touch to assist the sight or to release
the sight for other employment, as in reading speech for instance. Here a
touch-alphabet may be an efficient aid to the sight, as the touch may
fairly keep pace with the rapidity of oral expression in deliberate
speech. An objection of Dr. Kitto to the two-hand alphabet so widely know
by school-children and others in Great Britain and in this country would
seem to apply with greater force to the Dalgarno alphabet: "To hit the
right digit on all occasions is by far the most difficult point to learn
in the use of the [two-hand] manual alphabet, and it is hard to be sure
which fingers have been touched."[9]
[Footnote 9: Dr. Kitto remaks the following common mistakes in reading
rapid two-hand spelling: the confounding _i_ with _e_ or _o_; _d_ with
_p_; _l_ with _t_; _f_ with _x_; _r_ with _t_ and with one form of _j_;
_n_ with _v_, and adds: "Upon the whole, the system is very defective,
and is capable of great improvement." _--The Lost Senses_, p. 107.]
It is not the purpose of the writer to attempt even a catalogue of the
numerous finger alphabets, common, tactile, phonetic, "phonomimic,"
"phonodactylologic," and syllabic, which have been proposed for the
special use of the deaf.
The one-hand alphabet used by Ponce and figured by Bonet was common in
Spanish almanacs hawked by ballad-mongers upon the streets of Madrid in
the days of De l'Epee, and although rejected by him, it was adopted by
his pupils. This with slight modifications became the French manual
alphabet which was introduced at Hartford by Dr. Thomas Hopkins
Gallaudet. This alphabet is known in almost every hamlet in the land.
Slight changes in the form of certain letters, or in the position of the
hand, in the direction of greater perspicuity and capacity for rapid use,
have taken place gradually, though there is no absolute uniformity of
usage among instructors or pupils.
This "American" alphabet, as here presented, through the liberality of
Dr. A. Graham Bell, has been drawn and engraved from photographs, and
represents typical positions of the fingers, hand and fore-arm from a
uniform point of view in front of the person spelling, or as seen in a
large mirror by the user himself.[10]
[Footnote 10: See an interesting paper on figured manual alphabets by
H.H. Hollister, _Annals_, xv., 88-93.]
This alphabet can be learned in less than an hour, and many have learned
it by extraordinary application in ten minutes. It is recommended that
the arm be held in an easy position near the body, with the fore-arm as
in the plates. Each letter should be mastered before leaving it. Speed
will come with use; it should not be attempted nor permitted until the
forms of the letters and the appropriate positions of the hand are
thoroughly familiar. The forms as given are legible from the distant
parts of a public hall. In colloquial use the fingers need not be so
closely held nor firmly flexed, as represented, but sprawling should be
avoided. It is not necessary to move the arm, but a slight leverage at
the elbow is conducive to ease and is permissible, provided the hand
delivers the letters steadily within an imaginary immovable ring of, say,
ten inches in diameter.
[Illustration: THE ONE-HAND ALPHABET IN GENERAL USE.--FRONT VIEW.]
This adjunct to speech-reading is recommended for its convenience,
clearness, rapidity, and ease in colloquial use, as well as for its value
as an educational instrument in impressing words, phrases, and sentences
in their spelled form upon the mind, in testing the comprehension of
children, and in affording by easy steps a substitute for the
sign-language.
In the simultaneous instruction of large classes not able to follow
speech, finger-spelling "may take the place of signs to a great extent in
the definition, explanation, and illustration of single words and
phrases, and in questions and answers upon the lessons, and in
communications of every kind to which the stock of language already
acquired may be adequate."[11]
[Footnote 11: _The Use of the Manual Alphabet_, by S. Porter: Proceedings
of the Eighth Convention of American Instructors, pp. 21-30. Copies of
the Proceedings which contain this extremely valuable paper may be
obtained of R. Mathison, Superintendent of the Ontario Institution,
Belleville, Ontario.]
All who have anything to do with the school instruction of the deaf may
well bear in mind the matured opinion and wise counsel of Professor
Samuel Porter, of the National College, the Nestor of American
instructors. In this connection, Professor Porter says:
_In short, let the gestural signs come in only as a last resort, or, so
far as possible, merely as supplementary to words, re-enforcing them in
some instances, or employed as a test of the pupil's knowledge of words,
but always, so far as possible, falling behind and taking a subordinate
place. And let the pupils be required, in what they have to say to their
teachers in the schoolroom or elsewhere, to employ the finger-alphabet
instead of natural signs to the utmost possible extent, and this by
complete sentences and not in a fragmentary way_.