[HN Gopher] Nicaraguan Sign Language
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       Nicaraguan Sign Language
        
       Author : Tomte
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2022-04-03 07:52 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
        
       | darkerside wrote:
       | Weren't most languages spontaneously developed?
        
         | jan_Inkepa wrote:
         | Most modern sign languages come genetically from British sign
         | language or French Sign Language.
         | 
         | https://www.reddit.com/r/language/comments/ewtpnj/sign_langu...
        
         | gizmo686 wrote:
         | No. Most languages evolved from earlier languages through
         | gradual linguistic drift. Some languages emerged by putting
         | fluent speakers of two or more existing languages into a shared
         | environment and having them form a common language.
         | 
         | Nicaraguan Sign Language is the closest example we have of
         | putting a bunch of humans who don't know any language into a
         | shared environment, and watching them develop a new language,
         | with minimal influence of existing languages.
         | 
         | Of course, this was not actually a linguistically isolated
         | community. But, for obvious ethical reasons, it is probably
         | about as close to one as we will get.
        
           | darkerside wrote:
           | That makes sense. They likely all have ancestors that were
           | spontaneously formed, but are not so themselves. It seems
           | like dialects might be spontaneously formed, and I wonder how
           | we draw the line between languages and dialects.
        
         | melissalobos wrote:
         | In the remote past, yes. It is more interesting that this
         | happened recently.
        
       | winterismute wrote:
       | It's so incredible to see this today as only yesterday I have
       | played this with some friends: https://thornygames.com/pages/sign
       | It is board game based on a stripped down rendition of the story
       | of NSL, I really recommend it as it is simple but it makes for a
       | game experience which is pleasantly unusual.
        
       | pmoriarty wrote:
       | For people interested in this sort of thing, I'd recommend
       | _Seeing Voices_ [1] by Oliver Sacks, in which he writes about
       | spontaneous development of language by people who grew up without
       | it.
       | 
       | [1] - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/66723.Seeing_Voices
        
       | ambyra wrote:
       | There's a great radiolab episode about this. They found the older
       | generations of signers didn't just sign more primitively, but
       | they couldn't comprehend more complex ideas bc they weren't build
       | into the language yet.
       | 
       | https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91725...
        
         | marton78 wrote:
         | That is one of the best Radiolab episodes ever. It's immensely
         | interesting, highly recommended!
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-03 23:00 UTC)