Читать книгу Sign Talk - Ernest Thompson Seton - Страница 15

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My own interest in the study had been growing for thirty years, and to satisfy myself that it was not a mere fad of slight and passing import, I set down carefully the reasons for studying and using the Sign Language, not forgetting its limitations. I set these also in hostile array and will give them first:

It is useless in the dark.

It cannot serve over the telephone.

It can scarcely be written, except by cumbrous pictographs.

It cannot give new proper names; they must be spelled.

But the reasons for the study were more numerous and stronger.

1st. It develops observation and accurate thinking. All races that excel in sign-talking are noted for their keenness of observation. Which is cause and which effect one cannot certainly determine, but it is sure that this method of communication is excellent practice to develop observation, and it makes for a wonderfully graphic descriptive power.

Herein, perhaps, is its most enduring, the least obvious, claim to a high place. There is a sweet reasonableness, a mathematical accuracy, in the fabric of the Sign Language that has an insistent and reactionary effect on the mental processes and pictures of those who use it. Therefore, it is valuable for the kind of mind it makes.

2d. It is easily learned. Unlike most languages, it is very easily acquired, for most of the signs are natural in concept, and so logical that they explain themselves where their history is known. Six hundred signs (that is ideas) make a fairly good sign-talker.

3d. It is Indian talk. By means of this you can talk to any Plains Indian no matter what his speech; and there are many tribes each with its own tongue or dialect. In some measure it is understood and used by savages and keen observers all over the globe.

4th. A cognate code is the talk of the deaf; and is used the world round by them in preference to the manual alphabet when possible; so that a wide use of the much better Indian Sign Language will certainly result in their accepting it and thus tend to lessen the barrier between the deaf and their more fortunate brethren.

5th. It is silent talk. It can be used on occasions when it is necessary to give information, but improper or impossible to speak aloud. Thus, lecturers use it in directing their lanternist; friends use it for necessary information during musical performances; it is used at the bedside of the sick, the actors in a moving picture can utilize it, and so be comprehended the world round; the pantomime stage, forbidden to use speech, can easily make clear the plot by sign-talk.

In a recent letter, Prof. J. S. Long has furnished me with a touching instance (one that has since recurred) that indicates another and final service that the silent method can render: An eminent divine was on his deathbed. His life had been devoted to ministering to the deaf, he knew the Sign Language perfectly; for several hours before the end his power of ordinary speech had deserted him, but his mind was clear, and to the last he conversed freely with those about him, in this, the universal talk, the one which for its exercise depended on muscular powers that in his case were the last of all to fail.

6th. It allows talk in an uproar. It can be used when great noise makes it impossible to use the voice; therefore it can be of daily service in modern life, city or country, and each year it discovers new uses. Friends talk across a rackety thoroughfare or from a moving train; firemen and policemen, or sailors in a storm find it of growing service. The baseball umpire uses it when the roar of the multitude makes him voiceless; the catcher talks to the pitcher; the aeroplanist talks to his friends on earth; the stockholder on the curb buys and sells in it; the football captain or the army officer issues clear sign orders when the uproar of fight would drown even the trumpet call. The politician facing a shrieking mob may find it useful for conveying a few crude truths to his crude, unruly audience, thus opening the way for a more usual form of harangue, or failing in the attempt, he can at least inform his friends of his next move and his audience what he thinks of them. In St. Paul’s epoch-making address on the stairs of Jerusalem we have a good illustration of the first part of this.

7th. It is practical far-talk. It is a valuable method of talking at a distance, far beyond earshot. Compared with the other modes of far-signalling it has the great advantages of speed, for it gives a sentence while semaphore, Morse, or Myer code give a letter, and of inconspicuousness at short range, or in a crowd; also it is independent of apparatus.

8th. It is a true universal language. It is already established. Instinctively the whole world has adopted it in a measure; and daily proofs of this are seen. Rasmussen among the Eskimo would have been helpless, he tells us, for he knew not their tongue, and they not a word of his, but they were expert sign-talkers and the lingual barrier was swept away. So also Henry among the Mandans, and Butler among the Basutos, while a thousand other cases could be aligned.

It is so complete that Dr. W. C. Roe and many others regularly preach and lecture in the language of Signs, to congregations in which several spoken tongues are used and would be necessary to the preacher were he limited to sounds.

It is so fundamental indeed that it is the easiest means of communicating with animals; the best trainers of dogs and horses use Sign Language as the principal medium of command.

But, for lack of standards and codification, its use is much smaller than it might be; and yet larger than commonly supposed. At least 100 of the 725 signs herein given are in daily employ among hearing white folk in America. After a little extension of the study, as is inevitable with a standard code, one will be able to travel all over Europe, the world indeed, on Sign Language alone. No matter what the other man’s language may be, French, German, Russian, Greek, all are the same in the Sign Language because it expresses ideas, not words. This, then, is its chief obvious strength—It is a universal language.

It was with this in view that the French and German equivalents were added after each sign; and since it is impossible to render in one word a sign that stands for a broad idea and is capable of conveying many meanings, according to the context and sense, the foreign equivalents are understood to deal only with the simplest root idea, that which usually is expressed by the first of the English words given.

It is my earnest hope that we may have an International Society of the Sign Language whose functions would be to keep it pure, to add new signs as they are needed, and to aim at its complete development.

Also, that in furtherance of this a thorough, full, and careful record of the old Indian Sign Language will be made before it is too late; that is, before all the old-time Indians of the Plains are dead.

My own effort is meant not as a record of the past, but a starting point for the future.