True Biz

by Sara Nović

imagine telling someone that learning French would ruin their kid’s English, hurt their brain. Usually people scoffed at her and February would nod. It did sound ridiculous. And yet, though fear of bilingualism in two spoken languages had been dismissed as xenophobic nonsense, though it was now desirable for hearing children to speak two languages, medicine held fast to its condemnation of ASL.

EYETH—GET IT? In the Deaf storytelling tradition, utopia is called Eyeth because it’s a society that centers the eye, not the ear, like here on Earth. In the Deaf world, there’s a famous story of a utopian planet where everyone signs and everything is designed for easy visual access. In some tellings, hearing people are the minority and learn to conform to the majority sign language, in others the planet is completely Deaf. Have any of you seen an Eyeth story? Eyeth may be a pun, but it’s not a joke—it’s a myth. MYTH (N):

DID YOU KNOW? • Deaf scholars have proven that Deafness meets the requirements to be considered an ethnicity. • Historically this was the common view before oral education nearly eradicated sign languages. • Even Alexander Graham Bell, who wanted to rid society of deafness, spoke of “a race of Deaf people.”

Austin sometimes thought that if hearing people ever studied the power and speed of the Deaf rumor mill, they might think twice about classifying deafness as a “communication disorder.”

1 in 25 is 4% of the town’s population. • 1 in 155 is only 0.6% of the Vineyard’s population, but compared to the nation’s average at the time—0.018%—it made a big difference. What do you think happened next? LIFE ON REAL-LIFE EYETH • Deaf islanders developed their own language, “Chilmark Sign,” now called Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL). • Deaf and hearing islanders all signed. • Deaf and hearing people worked and socialized together without barriers. • Hearing people sometimes even signed without deaf people around!

Does MVSL still exist? Not exactly. In 1817, the American School for the Deaf opened in Connecticut, and many children from Martha’s Vineyard attended. They brought MVSL with them, and it mixed with French Sign Language (LSF) and other home signs to create the ASL we speak today.