A "one hand alphabet in general use", as published in the American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, 1886.

Fingerspelling (sometimes known as dactylology) is the representation of the letters of a writing system, and sometimes numeral systems, using only the hands. There are many manual alphabets (also known as finger alphabets or hand alphabets) in use, past and present — especially in deaf education and, subsequently adopted as a distinct part of a number of sign languages around the world. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1200x544, 162 KB) Summary Source: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Scientific American Supplement, No. ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (1200x544, 162 KB) Summary Source: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Scientific American Supplement, No. ... A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... Writing Systems of the World today A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... A numeral is a symbol or group of symbols that represents a number. ... A sign language (also signed language) is a language which uses manual communication instead of sound to convey meaning - simultaneously combining handshapes, orientation and movement of the hands, arms or body, and facial expressions to express fluidly a speakers thoughts. ...

As with other forms of manual communication, fingerspelling can be comprehended visually or tactually. The simplest visual form of fingerspelling is tracing the shape of letters in the air, or tactually, tracing letters onto the palm. However, most manual alphabets use a unique hand sign to represent individual letters, distinguished by handshape and palm orientation, and sometimes movement, location and mouth patterns. The handshapes are often based on stylised representations of the shapes of the letters as they are written. Pupils in a traditional classroom situation signal to their teacher that they want to be heard Manual communication systems use articulation of the hands (hand signs), gestures, body language and facial expressions in place of the voice to mediate a message between persons. ... Tactile signing is a common means of communication used by people with both a sight and hearing impairment (see Deafblindness), which is based on a standard system of Deaf manual signs. ...

Manual alphabets exist for representing Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Devanāgarī, Bengali, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Hangul, Kanji, Kana and Ge'ez scripts. Related manual systems are in use which phonetically represent sound, rather than the written form of a spoken language. These systems, sometimes called "Mouth Hand Systems" (MHS) include Cued Speech and a unique MHS developed in Denmark in 1903 by Georg Forchhammer.^[1] The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters) is an alphabet used for several Slavic languages; (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Rusyn, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... DevanāgarÄ« (Sanskrit: —, pronounced , in English pronounced ) is an abugida writing system used to write, either along with other scripts, or exclusively, several North Indian languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Nepali from Nepal and sometimes Kashmiri and Romani. ... The Bengali script is an Abugida system of writing belonging to the Brahmic family of scripts whose use is associated with the Bangla, Assamese, Manipuri and Sylheti languages. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing in the Arabic language. ... This article is mainly about Hebrew letters. ... Hangul also refers to a word processing application widely used in Korea. ... Japanese writing Kanji Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Manyogana Uses Furigana Okurigana Rōmaji Kanji (Japanese: ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the arabic numerals. ... Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Manyogana 万葉仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 For other meanings of Kana, see Kana (disambiguation). ... The Geez language (or Giiz language) is an ancient language that developed in the Ethiopian Highlands of the Horn of Africa as the language of the peasantry. ... Cued Speech is a system of communication used with and among deaf or hard of hearing people. ...

Fingerspelling in sign languages

Fingerspelling has been introduced into certain sign languages by educators, both deaf and hearing, and as such has some structural properties that are unlike the visually-motivated and multi-layered signs that are typical in deaf sign languages. In many ways fingerspelling serves as a bridge between the sign language and the spoken language that surrounds it.

Fingerspelling is used in different sign languages and registers for different purposes. It may used be to represent words which have no sign equivalent, or for emphasis, clarification, or when teaching or learning a sign language. In American Sign Language (ASL), more lexical items are fingerspelled in casual conversation than in formal or narrative signing.^[2] Different sign language "speech communities" use fingerspelling to a greater or lesser degree. At the high end of the scale,^[3] fingerspelling makes up about 8.7% of casual signing in ASL,^[4] and 10% of casual signing in Auslan.^[5] The proportion is higher in older signers, suggesting that the use of fingerspelling has diminished over time. Across the Tasman Sea, only 2.5% of the corpus of New Zealand Sign Language was found to be fingerspelling.^[6] Fingerspelling has only become a part of NZSL since the 1980s;^[7] prior to that, words could be spelled or initialised by tracing letters in the air.^[8] Fingerspelling does not seem to be used much in the sign languages of Eastern Europe, except in schools,^[9] and Italian Sign Language is also said to use very little fingerspelling, and mainly for foreign words. Sign languages that make no use of fingerspelling at all include Kata Kolok and Ban Khor Sign Language. Register or registration may mean: Registration (or licensing) is required of a number of occupations and professions where maintenance of standards is required to protect public safety. ... American Sign Language (ASL, also Amslan obs. ... Speech community is a concept in sociolinguistics that describes a more or less discrete group of people who use language in a unique and mutually accepted way among themselves. ... Auslan is the sign language used by the Australian Deaf community. ... Map of the Tasman Sea Satellite photo of the Tasman Sea The Tasman Sea is the large body of water between Australia and New Zealand, some 2000 kilometres (1250 miles) across. ... Corpus linguistics is the study of language as expressed in samples (corpora) or real world text. ... New Zealand Sign Language or NZSL is the main language of the deaf community in New Zealand. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... Kata Kolok (literally deaf talk) is the name given to a sign language of a village in northern Bali which has had an extraordinarily high rate of deafness for several generations. ... Ban Khor Sign Language (BKSL) is a sign language used by about 1,000 people of a rice-farming community in remote areas of Isan (northeastern Thailand). ...

1140 AD illustration of a finger alphabet and counting system described by Bede in 710 AD. The Greek alphabet is represented, with three additional letters making a total of 27, by the first three columns of numbers. The first two columns are produced on the left hand, and the next two columns on the right.

The speed and clarity of fingerspelling also varies between different signing communities. In Italian Sign Language, fingerspelled words are relatively slow and clearly produced, whereas fingerspelling in standard British Sign Language (BSL) is often rapid so that the individual letters become difficult to distinguish, and the word is grasped from the overall hand movement. Most of the letters of the BSL alphabet are produced with two hands, but when one hand is occupied, the dominant hand may fingerspell onto an "imaginary" subordinate hand, and the word can be recognised by the movement. As with written words, the first and last letters and the length of the word are the most significant factors for recognition. Image File history File links Bede_finger_alphabet. ... Image File history File links Bede_finger_alphabet. ... Bede depicted in an early medieval manuscript Depiction of Bede from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. ... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ... British Sign Language (BSL) is the sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK). ...

When persons fluent in sign language read fingerspelling, they do not usually look at the signer's hand(s), but maintain eye contact and look at the face of the signer as is normal for sign language. People who are learning fingerspelling often find it impossible to understand it using just their peripheral vision and must look directly at the hand of someone who is fingerspelling. Often, they must also ask the signer to fingerspell slowly. It frequently takes years of expressive and receptive practice to become skilled with fingerspelling. Peripheral vision is a part of vision that occurs outside the very center of gaze. ...

History

Alphabetic gestures have been discovered in hundreds of medieval and renaissance paintings.^[10] The above is from Fernando Gallego's retablo panels, 1480-1488, in Ciudad Rodrigo.

Some writers have suggested that the body and hands were used to represent alphabets in Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Assyrian antiquity.^[11] Certainly, "finger calculus" systems were widespread, and capable of representing numbers up to 10,000;^[12] they are still in use today in parts of the Middle East. The practice of substituting letters for numbers and vice versa, known as gematria, was also common, and it is possible that the two practices were combined to produce a finger calculus alphabet. The earliest known manual alphabet, described by the Benedictine monk Bede in 8th century Northumbria, did just that.^[13] While the usual purpose of the Latin and Greek finger alphabets described by Bede is unknown, they were unlikely to have been used by deaf people for communication — even though Bede lost his own hearing later in life. Historian Lois Bragg concludes that these alphabets were "only a bookish game."^[14] Image File history File links Gallego_retablo_panel_313. ... Image File history File links Gallego_retablo_panel_313. ... Ciudad Rodrigo is a small town in Salamanca province in western Spain Its position as a fortified town on the main road from Portugal to Salamanca made it militarily important in the middle years of the Peninsular War. ... Gematria (Heb. ... A Benedictine is a person who follows the Rule of St Benedict. ... Bede depicted in an early medieval manuscript Depiction of Bede from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. ... (7th century — 8th century — 9th century — other centuries) Events The Iberian peninsula is taken by Arab and Berber Muslims, thus ending the Visigothic rule, and starting almost 8 centuries of Muslim presence there. ... Section from Shepherds map of the British Isles about 802 AD showing the kingdom of Northumbria Northumbria is primarily the name of a petty kingdom of Angles which was formed in Great Britain at the beginning of the 7th century, from two smaller kingdoms of Bernicia and Diera, and...

Beginning with R. A. S. Macalister in 1938,^[15] several writers have speculated that the 5th century Irish Ogham script, with its quinary alphabet system, was derived from a finger alphabet that predates even Bede.^[16] Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister (1870-1950) was an Irish archaeologist. ... Europe in 450 The 5th century is the period from 401 - 500 in accordance with the Julian calendar in the Christian Era. ... Ogham (Old Irish Ogam) was an alphabet used primarily to represent Gaelic languages. ... Quinary (base-5) is a numeral system with five as the base. ...

Antique hand memory system, three variants. Originally published in "Thesavrvs Artificiosae Memoriae", in Venice, 1579.

European monks from at least the time of Bede have made use of forms of manual communication, including alphabetic gestures, for a number of reasons: communication among the monastery while observing vows of silence, administering to the ill, and as mnemonic devices. They also may have been used as ciphers for discreet or secret communication. Clear antecedents of many of the manual alphabets in use today can be seen from the 16th century in books published by friars in Spain and Italy.^[17] From the same time, monks such as the Benedictine Fray Pedro Ponce de León began tutoring deaf children of wealthy patrons — in some places, literacy was a requirement for legal recognition as an heir — and the manual alphabets found a new purpose.^[18] They were originally part of the earliest known Mouth Hand Systems. The first book on deaf education, published in 1620 in Madrid, included a detailed account of the use of a manual alphabet to teach deaf students to read and speak.^[19] Image File history File links 16_103p_from_ralph_major_slide_collection. ... Image File history File links 16_103p_from_ralph_major_slide_collection. ... Pupils in a traditional classroom situation signal to their teacher that they want to be heard Manual communication systems use articulation of the hands (hand signs), gestures, body language and facial expressions in place of the voice to mediate a message between persons. ... A vow of silence is a period where you cant speak. ... It has been suggested that Mnemonic journey method be merged into this article or section. ... This article is about algorithms for encryption and decryption. ... (15th century - 16th century - 17th century - more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century was that century which lasted from 1501 to 1600. ... A friar is a member of a religious mendicant order of men. ... Pedro Ponce de León teaching a pupil. ...

Plate from John Bulwer's 1648 publication Philocopus, or the Deaf and Dumbe Mans Friend (London).

Meanwhile in Britain, manual alphabets were also in use for a number of purposes, such as secret communication,^[20] public speaking, or used for communication by deaf people.^[21] In 1648, John Bulwer described "Master Babington", a deaf man proficient in the use of a manual alphabet, "contryved on the joynts of his fingers", whose wife could converse with him easily, even in the dark though the use of tactile signing.^[22] In 1680, George Dalgarno published Didascalocophus, or, The deaf and dumb mans tutor,^[23] in which he presented his own method of deaf education, including an "arthrological" alphabet, where letters are indicated by pointing to different joints of the fingers and palm of the left hand. Arthrological systems had been in use by hearing people for some time;^[24] some have speculated that they can be traced to early Ogham manual alphabets.^[25] The vowels of this alphabet have survived in the contemporary alphabets used in British Sign Language, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language. The earliest known printed pictures of consonants of the modern two-handed alphabet appeared in 1698 with Digiti Lingua, a pamphlet by an anonymous author who was himself unable to speak. He suggested that the manual alphabet could also be used by mutes, for silence and secrecy, or purely for entertainment. Nine of its letters can be traced to earlier alphabets, and 17 letters of the modern two-handed alphabet can be found among the two sets of 26 handshapes depicted. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (310x754, 259 KB) Summary Plate from: Bulwer, John. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (310x754, 259 KB) Summary Plate from: Bulwer, John. ... Tactile signing is a common means of communication used by people with both a sight and hearing impairment (see Deafblindness), which is based on a standard system of Deaf manual signs. ... George Dalgarno (1626-1687) was a Scottish intellectual interested in linguistic problems. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... Several manual alphabets in use around the world employ two hands for some or all of the letters. ...

Charles de La Fin published a book in 1692 describing an alphabetic system where pointing to a body part represented the first letter of the part (eg. Brow=B), and vowels were located on the fingertips as with the other British systems.^[26] He described codes for both English and Latin.

By 1720, the British manual alphabet had found more or less its present form.^[27] Descendents of this alphabet have been used by deaf communities (or at least in classrooms) in former British colonies India, Australia, New Zealand, Uganda and South Africa, as well as the republics and provinces of the former Yugoslavia, Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean, Indonesia, Norway, Germany and the USA. In many of these places, the vowels are represented by iconic signs rather than pointing to the fingertips.

Latin alphabet

There are two families of manual alphabets used for representing the Latin alphabet in the modern world. The more common of the two^[28] is mostly produced on one hand, and can be traced back to alphabetic signs used in Europe from at least the early 15th century. The alphabet, first described completely by Spanish monks, was adopted by the Abbé de l'Épée's deaf school in Paris in the 18th century, and was then spread to deaf communities around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries via educators who had learnt it there. Over time, variations have emerged, brought about by natural phonetic changes that occur over time, adaptions for local written forms with special characters or diacritics, and avoidance of handshapes that are considered obscene in some cultures. Modern descendents include the American Sign Language alphabet and the "international manual alphabet". The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... Abbé Charles-Michel de lÉpée, b. ... Sound change or phonetic change is a historical process of language change consisting in the replacement of one speech sound or, more generally, one phonetic feature by another in a given phonological environment. ... A diacritic mark or accent mark is an additional mark added to a basic letter. ... The American Sign Language Alphabet is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language when spelling individual letters of a word is the preferred or only option, such as with proper names or the titles of works. ...

The "two-handed manual alphabet" used in British Sign Language and the related languages of Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language, is also used, with some variation, by a number of deaf communities around the world. BSL is also an abbreviation for Breed-specific legislation. ... British Sign Language (BSL) is the sign language used in the United Kingdom (UK). ... Auslan is the sign language used by the Australian Deaf community. ... New Zealand Sign Language or NZSL is the main language of the deaf community in New Zealand. ...

Other alphabets

Manual alphabets based on the Arabic alphabet, the Ethiopian syllabary and the Korean Hangul syllabary-alphabet use handshapes that are more or less iconic representations of the characters in the writing system. Some manual representations of non-roman scripts such as Chinese, Japanese, Indian Nagari, Israeli, Greek, Thai and Russian alphabets are based to some extent on the one-handed roman alphabet described above.

References

1. ^ Birch-Rasmussen, S. (1982). Mundhandsystemet. Copenhagen: Doves Center for Total Kommunikation.
   Reynolds, Brian Watkins (1980). Speechreading training related to the Danish mouth handsystem for adventitiously hearing impaired adults. Ann Arbor : U.M.I. 1980 - 145 p. Dissertation: Purdue Univ.
2. ^ Morford, Jill Patterson, and MacFarlane, James (2003). Frequency Characteristics of American Sign Language. Sign Language Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, Winter 2003, pp. 213-225
3. ^ Padden, Carol A. (2003). How the alphabet came to be used in a sign language, Sign Language Studies, 4.1. Gallaudet University Press
4. ^ Ibid.
5. ^ Schembri, A. & Johnston, T. (in press). Sociolinguistic variation in fingerspelling in Australian Sign Language (Auslan): A pilot study. Sign Language Studies.
6. ^ McKee, David and Kennedy, Graeme (2000). Corpus analysis of New Zealand Sign Language. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research. Amsterdam. July 23rd-27th
7. ^ McKee, R. L., & McKee, D. (2002). A guide to New Zealand Sign Language grammar. Deaf Studies Research Unit, Occasional Publication No.3, Victoria University of Wellington.
8. ^ Forman, Wayne. (2003) The ABCs of New Zealand Sign Language: Aerial Spelling. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. Volume 8, Number 1, January 2003. ISSN 1081-4159.
9. ^ J. Albert Bickford (2005). The Signed Languages of Eastern EuropePDF. SIL Electronic Survey Report.
10. ^ From a University of Arizona press release: "An accidental discovery in 1991 of a manual alphabet in a 1444 painting of King Charles VII of France by Jean Fouquet has led Joseph Castronovo to decipher the "artistic signatures" in over 500 pieces of art work." [1]
    See also: Bragg, Lois (1996). Chaucer's Monogram and the 'Hoccleve Portrait' Tradition, Word and Image 12 (1996): 12
11. ^ Barrois, J. (1850). Dactylologie et langage primitif. Paris 1850; Firmin Didot freres.
12. ^ Alföldi-Rosenbaum, E. (1971). The finger calculus in antiquity and in the Middle Ages: Studies on Roman game counters part I. Friihmiltelalterliche Studien, 6, 1-9.
    See also: Menninger, K. (1958). Number words and number symbols: A cultural history of numbers. Translated by Paul Broneer. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969. (p. 201). Originally published as Zahlwort und Ziffer (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht).
13. ^ Bede. (710 AD). De Computo vel Loguela per Gestum Digitorum ("Of counting or speaking with the fingers"), preface to De temporum ratione ("On the reckoning of time"). Illustrated in 1140 AD, National Library, Madrid.
14. ^ Bragg, Lois (1997). Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe Before 1600: A Survey of Sign Lexicons and Finger Alphabets Prior to the Rise of Deaf Education. Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 2:1 Winter 1997
15. ^ Macalister, R. A. S. (1928). The Archaeology of Ireland. London: Meuthen
16. ^ See, for example: Graves, Robert, (1948). The White Goddess.
17. ^ Cosma-Rossellios R.P.F. (1579) "Thesavrvs Artificiosae Memoriae", Venice.
    Fray Melchor de Yebra, (1593) Refugium Infirmorum
18. ^ Plann, Susan. (1997). A Silent Minority: Deaf Education in Spain, 1550-1835. Berkeley: University of California Press.
19. ^ Juan Pablo Bonet (1620). Reducción de las letras y arte para enseñar á hablar los mudos ("The Adaptation of Arts and Letters for Teaching Deaf-Mutes to Speak"). Published by Francisco Abarca, Madrid.
20. ^ Wilkins, John (1641). Mercury, the Swift and Silent Messenger. The book is a work on cryptography, and fingerspelling was referred to as one method of "secret discoursing, by signes and gestures". Wilkins gave an example of such a system: "Let the tops of the fingers signifie the five vowels; the middle parts, the first five consonants; the bottomes of them, the five next consonants; the spaces betwixt the fingers the foure next. One finger laid on the side of the hand may signifie T. Two fingers V the consonant; Three W. The little finger crossed X. The wrist Y. The middle of the hand Z." (1641:116-117)
21. ^ John Bulwer's "Chirologia: or the naturall language of the hand.", published in 1644, London, mentions that alphabets are in use by Deaf people, although Bulwer presents a different system which is focussed on public speaking.
22. ^ Bulwer, J. (1648) Philocopus, or the Deaf and Dumbe Mans Friend, London: Humphrey and Moseley.
23. ^ Dalgarno, George. Didascalocophus, or, The deaf and dumb mans tutor. Oxford: Halton, 1680.
24. ^ See Wilkins (1641) above. Wilkins is aware that the systems he describes are old, and refers to Bede's account of Roman and Greek finger alphabets.
25. ^ http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/DeafStudiesTeaching/bslsoc/Sessions/s9.htm
26. ^ Charles de La Fin (1692). Sermo mirabilis, or, The silent language whereby one may learn ... how to impart his mind to his friend, in any language ... being a wonderful art kept secret for several ages in Padua, and now published only to the wise and prudent ... London, Printed for Tho. Salusbury... and sold by Randal Taylor... 1692. OCLC 27245872
27. ^ Daniel Defoe (1720). "The Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell"
28. ^ Carmel, Simon (1982). International hand alphabet charts. National Association of the Deaf (United States); 2nd edition. (June 1982). ISBN 0-9600886-2-8

Ibid (Latin, short for ibidem, the same place) is the term used to provide an endnote or footnote citation or reference for a source that was cited in the last endnote or footnote. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... SIL International is a worldwide non-profit organization whose main purpose is to study, develop and document lesser-known languages in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy and aid minority language development. ... Virgin and Child Surrounded by Angels (c. ... Bede depicted in an early medieval manuscript Depiction of Bede from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. ... Portrait of Robert Graves (circa 1974) by Rab Shiell Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English scholar, poet, and novelist. ... The author and poet Robert Graves study of the nature of poetic myth-making, The White Goddess, first published in 1948, and revised, amended and enlarged in 1966, represents a tangential approach to the study of mythology from a decidedly idiosyncratic perspective. ... The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) was founded in 1880 as a non-profit, advocacy organization for the American Deaf community. ...

See also

• American Sign Language alphabet
• Korean manual alphabet
• Japanese Sign Language syllabary
• Cued Speech

The American Sign Language Alphabet is a manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language when spelling individual letters of a word is the preferred or only option, such as with proper names or the titles of works. ... The Korean manual alphabet is used by the Deaf in South Korea who speak Korean Sign Language. ... This page meets Wikipedias criteria for speedy deletion. ... Cued Speech is a system of communication used with and among deaf or hard of hearing people. ...

External links

• ASL Fingerspelling Resource Site Free online fingerspelling lessons, quizzes, and activities.
• ASL Fingerspelling Online Practice Tool Test and improve your receptive fingerspelling skills using this free online resource.
• Deafblind alphabets explained with graphics for the sighted.