Nicaraguan Sign Language

Nicaraguan Sign Language (ISN; Spanish: Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua) is a sign language developed by deaf children in several schools in Nicaragua.

History

Before the 1970s, a deaf community largely socializing with and amongst each other was not present in Nicaragua. Deaf people were generally isolated from one another and mostly used simple home sign systems and gesture (mímicas) to communicate with their families and friends, though there were several cases of idioglossia among deaf siblings. The conditions necessary for a language to arise occurred in 1977 when a center for special education established a scheme that was initially attended by 50 deaf children. The number of pupils at the school (in the Managua neighborhood of San Judas) then grew to 100 by 1979, the beginning of the Sandinista Revolution.

In 1980 a vocational school for deaf adolescents was opened in the Villa Libertad area of Managua. By 1983 more than 400 deaf pupils were enrolled in the two schools. Initially, the language scheme emphasized spoken Spanish and lipreading, and the use of signs by teachers was limited to fingerspelling (using simple signs to sign the alphabet).

The scheme achieved little success, with most pupils failing to grasp the concept of Spanish words. The children subsequently remained linguistically disconnected from their teachers, but the schoolyard, the street, and the school bus provided fertile ground for them to communicate with one another. By combining gestures and elements of their home-sign systems, a pidgin-like form and a creole-like language rapidly emerged — they were creating their language. The "first-stage" pidgin has been called Lenguaje de Signos Nicaragüense (LSN) and is still used by many who attended the school at the time.