History of sign language

The recorded history of sign language in Western societies starts in the 17th century, as a visual language or method of communication, although references to forms of communication using hand gestures date back as far as 5th century BC Greece. Sign language is composed of a system of conventional gestures, mimic, hand signs and finger spelling, plus the use of hand positions to represent the letters of the alphabet. Signs can also represent complete ideas or phrases, not only individual words.

Most sign languages are natural languages, different in construction from oral languages used in proximity to them, and are employed mainly by deaf people in order to communicate. Many sign languages have developed independently throughout the world, and no first sign language can be identified. Both signed systems and manual alphabets have been found worldwide. Until the 19th century, most of what we know about historical sign languages is limited to the manual alphabets (fingerspelling systems) that were invented to facilitate transfer of words from an oral to a sign language, rather than documentation of the sign language itself.