NOTES ON MANUAL SPELLING.
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[4] with the finger is also slow and uncertain, while the action is unpleasantly conspicuous.
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[5] 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.
The origin of finger-spelling is not known. Barrois, a distinguished orientalist, in his Dactylologie et Langage primitif,[6] ingeniously traces evidences of finger-spelling, from the Assyrian antiquities down to the fifteenth century upon monuments of art.
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.[7] 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.[8] 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[9] 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[10] 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.
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."[11]
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."[12]
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.[13]
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.
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."[14]
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.
JOSEPH C. GORDON, M.A.,
Professor in the National College, Washington, D.C..
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.
Quatrieme Circulaire, Paris, 1836, p. 16. Carton's Memoire, 1845, p. 73.
Barrois: Dactylologie et langage primitif, Paris, 1850, Firmin Didot freres.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Philocophus: or, THE DEAFE and Dumbe Mans Friend. By I.B. [John Bulwer] sirnamed the Chorosopher. London, 1648. Pp. 106,107.
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.
See an interesting paper on figured manual alphabets by H.H. Hollister, Annals, xv., 88-93.
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.