Martha's Vineyard Sign Language

Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
MVSL
Native toUnited States
RegionMartha's Vineyard
Extinct1952
Early forms
Old Kentish Sign Language
  • Chilmark Sign Language[1]
Dialects
Language codes
ISO 639-3mre
mre
Glottologmart1251
ELPMartha's Vineyard Sign Language

Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) was a village sign-language that was once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard from the early 18th century to 1952. It was used by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness was not a barrier to participation in public life. Deaf people who signed Martha's Vineyard Sign Language were extremely independent.[2][3]

The language was able to thrive because of the unusually high percentage of deaf islanders and because deafness was a recessive trait, which meant that almost anyone might have both deaf and hearing siblings. In 1854, when the island's deaf population peaked, an average of one person in 155 was deaf, while the United States national average was one in about 5,730. In the town of Chilmark, which had the highest concentration of deaf people on the island, the average was 1 in 25; at one point, in a section of Chilmark called Squibnocket, as much as 1 in 4 of the population of 60 was deaf.[4]

Sign language on the island declined when the population migrated to the mainland. There are no fluent signers of MVSL today. Katie West, the last deaf person born into the island's sign-language tradition, died in 1952,[5] though there were a few elderly residents still able to recall MVSL when researchers started examining the language in the 1980s.[4] Linguists are working to save the language, but their task is difficult because they cannot experience MVSL firsthand.[citation needed]

  1. ^ "Martha's Vineyard Sign Language". Lifeprint. Archived from the original on 14 October 2015. Retrieved 13 October 2015.
  2. ^ "The Life and Death of Martha's Vineyard Sign Language". The Atlantic. 25 September 2015. Archived from the original on 4 July 2018. Retrieved 4 July 2018.
  3. ^ "Everyone on Martha's Vineyard Used to Know Sign Language". Atlas Obscura. 4 May 2016. Archived from the original on 27 November 2020. Retrieved 19 November 2020.
  4. ^ a b "Chilmark Deaf Community Digital Historical Archive". catalog.chilmarklibrary.org. Archived from the original on 2016-08-11. Retrieved 2018-07-04.
  5. ^ Romm, Cari (2015-09-25). "The Life and Death of Martha's Vineyard Sign Language". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 2018-07-04. Retrieved 2018-07-04.