sometimes i think about village sign languages and. man…
they’re these languages that emerge in isolated communities with a high incidence of deafness. and high is relative - there might be only a dozen or so Deaf citizens, but the whole community, Deaf and hearing alike, build and use the language together. in daily life, in homes and workplaces, in the street. languages unique to one town, one valley, even one family! they happen all over the world. (if you want to look into them there’s some cool work here)
but they’re fragile by nature. people move, settle, and marry; their village sign languages form and fade.
and that means there must have been… so many of them. so many. thousands and thousands, since, like, the earliest days of the human species. people just do this when conditions are right! they have always done it! a sea of lights flickering on and off and on and off, illuminating homes that are made and changed and remade. we’ll never know them. we’ll never know.
i just. i think about all that loss and all that life. it’s not an eternal flame, language, it’s a garden. we are continually tending it for each other. because, like food, we need it to survive.
Happy Deaf Awareness Month!
