Auslan

History

Auslan evolved from sign languages brought to Australia during the nineteenth century from Britain and Ireland. The earliest record of a signing deaf Australian was convict Elizabeth Steel, who arrived in 1790 on the Second Fleet ship "Lady Juliana"{{ref|Branson}}. Another early immigrant known to use sign language was the engraver John Carmichael{{ref|Carty}} who arrived in Sydney in 1825 from Edinburgh. He had been to a deaf school there, and was known as a good signing storyteller.

Related Topics:
1790 - Second Fleet - 1825 - Edinburgh

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Thirty five years later in 1860, a school for the deaf was established by another deaf Scotsman, Thomas Pattison ? the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children. In Victoria at about the same time, the Victorian College for the Deaf was founded by a deaf Englishman, Frederick J Rose, who had been educated at the Old Kent Road School in London. These schools and others had an enormous role in the development of Auslan, as they were the first contact with sign language for many deaf children, and as residential boarding schools provided ample opportunity for the language to thrive, even though in many schools, signing was banned from the classroom for much of the 20th century.

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1860 - Thomas Pattison - Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children - Victorian College for the Deaf - Frederick J Rose - Old Kent Road School - Boarding school

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Irish Sign Language (ISL) also had an influence on the development of Auslan, as it was used in Catholic schools until the 1950s. The first Catholic school for deaf children was established in 1875 by Irish nuns. Unlike British Sign Language, ISL uses a one handed alphabet originating in French Sign Language (LSF), and although this alphabet has now almost disappeared from Australia, some initialised signs from the Irish alphabet can still be seen.

Related Topics:
Irish Sign Language - 1950s - 1875 - British Sign Language - French Sign Language

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In more recent times Auslan has seen a significant amount of lexical borrowing from American Sign Language (ASL), especially in signs for technical terms. Some of these arose from the signed English educational philosophies of the 1970s and 80s, when a committee looking for signs with direct equivalence to English words found them in ASL and spread them in the classroom. ASL contains many signs initialised from an alphabet which was also derived from LSF, and Auslan users, already familiar with the related ISL alphabet, accepted many of the new signs easily.

Related Topics:
American Sign Language - Signed English - 1970s - 80s

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