When did Nicaraguan Sign Language arise?
Before the 1970s, deaf people had no opportunities to gather in large numbers. Some deaf children met each other in small schools and clinics in Managua, but there were never very many of them together at one time, and they didn’t stay together as a group for many years in a row. There were also few opportunities for contact between deaf adults and children, so even if one generation developed some effective communication strategies, they wouldn’t pass them on to the next generation. Each group of children had to start over from the beginning. They would develop some home signs and some common gestures, but could not move beyond that. When you meet deaf people who were young children 30 years ago, they will tell you that communication was very hard back then, before there was a sign language. Even today, most deaf adults of that and older generations struggle to communicate in any language, spoken or signed. Changes in special education in the late 1970s and early 1980s led to dramatic
