Carol Padden, the First Deaf MacArthur Grantee, Studies How Bedouins Use Sign Language
By Gabrielle Birkner
Published October 27, 2010, issue of November 05, 2010.
The Jewish Daily Forward
As early immigrants to what is now Israel were learning how to communicate in a revived ancient language, the hard-of-hearing among them were creating a new language altogether. Combining signs from most all of the different countries from which the Jewish populations emigrated, Israeli Sign Language began to take shape in the 1930s. Around the same time, in a small village in Israel’s Negev Desert, another sign language was forming — one that did not grow out of older, existing sign languages, but arose, organically, out of the need to communicate with four deaf children born into one Bedouin family.
Photo: Caption: Ideal Setting: In Al-Sayyid village, researcher Carol Padden (right) has ‘the rare opportunity to observe a human language almost at the start of its development.’ Photo courtesy of Carol Padden.
Read more...