Language quiz

Question #1: Choose the correct answer:

Sign languages are as complex as oral languages and follow strict rules one needs to learn and practice. Deaf people use mime only when they must address a hearing person who doesn't know their language, but it is a very limited means of expression. Deaf people use manual alphabets only for proper names or concepts where they don't know the sign – spelling each word would be far too time-consuming and tedious!

Question #2: How many deaf children have at least one deaf parent who can pass on his/her language and function as a linguistic model?

In Europe about one child in 1000 is born deaf, in 90% of cases the parents are hearing. That is why for these families, unlike for other languages, there is no natural language transmission between generations.

Question #3: Where do sign languages come from?

The Abbé de l'Epée is the first person who recognized the importance of using a sign language for the instruction of deaf children and is credited to have brought together the deaf community in an institution that later became Institut Saint Jacques (which still exists in Paris). The Gallaudet University in Washington D.C. is the only sign language university in the world. Among other topics, research is carried out on sign languages. Some researchers who study language ability in animals try to teach primates a sign language (and not the other way round!) because their vocal apparatus doesn't enable them to produce speech. Yet concerning the evolution of human species it is not certain exactly when articulated language emerged and some researchers think it is probable that the ancestors of Homo sapiens first communicated by signs.

Question #4: Sign language is universal. True or false?

False: Estimations say there may be as many signed languages as there are spoken languages in the world.

Question #5: Deaf people in America and Great Britain use the same sign language. - true or false?

Question #6: Sign languages, just like spoken languages, form language families. - true or false?

True: And these families don't coincide since the history of language evolution is different for oral and signed languages. Thus for example American Sign Language is closely related to Ancient French Sign Language, because it was a deaf Frenchman, Laurent Clerc, who contributed to founding the first American school for the deaf in the early 19th century.

Question #7: Two deaf people, who do not have a common language, communicate more easily than people who do not have hearing problems, in the same situation - true or false?

True: The structures of sign languages are closer to each other than those of oral languages. In such situations, deaf people favour iconic structures that allow to overcome lexical divergences.

Question #8: In some schools, deaf children learn how to write their sign language using a letter invented by a ballerina. - true or false?

True: Due to a disease, Valerie Sutton could no longer work as a dancer. So she decided to write down the steps that she couldn't execute anymore and invented a system that was later taken up and adapted for sign languages.