20 , THE GESTURE-LANGUAGE. 



thought witli hands, fingers, and gestures, he developes for 

 himself suitable signs to represent ideas, which serve him as a 

 means of fixing ideas of different kinds in his mind and re- 

 calling them to his memory. And thus he makes himself a 

 language, the so-called gesture- language {Gebfrden-sin-ache) ; 

 and with these few scanty and imperfect signs, a way for 

 thought is already broken, and with his thought as it now 

 opens out, the language cultivates and forms itself further and 

 fupther."^ 



I will now give some account of the particular dialect (so to 

 speak) of the gestm^e-language, which is current in the Berlin 

 Deaf and Dumb Institution.^ I made a list of about 500 signs, 

 taking them down from my teacher, Carl Wilke, who is himself 

 deafraud-dumb. They talk of 5000 signs being in common use 

 there, bijt my list contains the most important. First, as to 

 the signs themselves, the following, taken at random, will give 

 an idea of the general principle on which all are formed. 



To express the pronouns "I, thou, he," I push my fore- 

 finger againgt the pit of my stomach for "I;" push it towards 

 the person addressed for "thouj" point with my thumb over 

 my right shoulder for "he ;" and so on. 



When I hold my right hand flat with the palm down, at the 

 level of my waist, and raise it towards the level of my shoulder, 

 that signifies "great;" but if I depress it instead, it means 

 "little," 



The sign for ^' man " is the motion of taking off the hat ; for 

 " woman," the closed hand is laid upon the breast ; for "^ child," 

 the right elbow is dandled upon the left hand. 



The adverb "hither" and the verb "to come" have the 

 same sign, beckoning with the finger toward oneself. 



To hold the first two fingers apart, like a letter V, and dart 

 the finger tips out from the eyes, is to " see." To touch the 



1 Kruse, ' Ueber Taubstummen,' etc. j Schleswig, 1853, p. 51. 



* Whether the '' dialects " of the diiferent deafTandrdumb institutions have re- 

 ceived any considerable proportion of natural signs from one another, as, for in- 

 stance, by the spreading of the system of teaching from Paris, I ^m unable to 

 say ; but there is so much in each that differs from the others in detail, though 

 not in principle, that they may, I think, be held as practically independent, ex- 

 cept as regards grammatical signs. 



