In honor of the man born on this day a few years ago…in 1712… our post today is on Abbe L’Eppe.
The French had long been in the vanguard in the fight to educate Deaf people when Charles-Michel Abbe de L’Epee came across a pair of deaf sisters and he received his life’s calling. He developed the first sign language (at least the first in Western Civilization). He named it…wait for it…French Sign Language (FSL). The creativity astounds! But seriously, his importance to Deaf Culture cannot be overstated. The origin story sounds like something out of a comic book. Just without the spandex. We hope.
In the spirit of getting out of the way and allowing people to speak for themselves, We’re going to take the account of the legendary story directly from a translated version we came across in Deaf in America by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries. That should actually be translated-squared. We’re reading the English version taken from an ASL version of the FSL telling. The story, nay, the performance, was given with all the gusto of a troubadour of yore. For those sign-illiterate folk like us, the authors gave us a majestic translation:
The Abbe de l’Epee had been walking for a long time through a dark night. He wanted to stop and rest overnight, but could not find a place to stay, until at a distance he saw a house with a light. He stopped at the house, knocked at the door, but no one answered. He saw that the door was open, so he entered the house and found two young women seated by the fire sewing. He spoke to them, but still they did not respond. He walked closer and spoke to them again, but they failed again to respond. The Abbe was perplexed, but seated himself beside them. They looked up at him and did not speak. At that point, their mother entered the room. Did the Abbe know that her daughters were deaf? He did not, but now he understood why they had not responded. As he contemplated the young women, the Abbe realized his vocation.
Page 27
Break-dancing.
Kidding, of course it was the education of deaf people. That was roughly the one billionth time the authors had heard the story during that trip to France. So mythic was the story that any visitor to any deaf community was regaled with it. After the origin story, the dude went on, in a more clinical tone, to say that the Abbe founded “the school for deaf children in Bordeaux in 1785 and the National Institute for Deaf-Mutes in Paris in 1794.” (p. 27) Then, ramping back up the enthusiasm, the manual bard explained with wonder how the Abbe would go on to invent the sign language they all use today, the sign language that would give birth to American Sign Language, too. While sign languages are honest-to-goodness languages, they are of a different ilk. Spoken languages are the super-duper majority (they’ve got a cape and everything) in the world. Manual languages like French Sign Language, Chilmark Sign Language, and American Sign Language are used by far fewer people. But they are a blessing. They allow deaf people to communicate effectively. And that’s something we hearing folk take for granted.
But, alas!, the boring facts were what the joyous tale was not: true. The real genesis of not just deaf schools but also FSL is more mundane. And more of an external request than an internal light-bulb moment. Much like the supposed inventor of the light bulb, Abbe de l’Epee took something and improved upon it, made it more efficient. In this case, the Humphry Davy to his Thomas Edison (who, fittingly, was deaf himself) were his students themselves. After meeting two deaf girls “on his rounds through an impoverished section of Paris…[their mother] asked him to give her daughters religious instruction.” (p. 28) He saw the gestures the students were using as a way to teach them the French language.
He would go on to found many schools, including the one that Thomas Gallaudet visited when he was searching for a way to educate deaf Americans. Gallaudet’s son, Edward, would go on to found what is today Gallaudet University, the best school for the deaf in the country.
We’ll leave you with a video celebrating L’Epee’s 300 birthday in 2012. At the end it describes what’s going on in the picture of L’Epee at the top of this post.
A Brother and A Half 