Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
| Martha's Vineyard Sign Language | |
|---|---|
| MVSL | |
| Native to | United States |
| Region | Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts |
| Extinct | with the death of Katie West (1952) |
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Early forms
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| Dialects | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | |
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Linguist list
|
mre |
| Glottolog | mart1251 |
Martha's Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL) was a village sign language that was once widely used on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, U.S., from the early 18th century to 1952. It was used by both deaf and hearing people in the community; consequently, deafness did not become a barrier to participation in public life. Deaf people who spoke Martha's Vineyard Sign Language were extremely independent. They participated in society as normal citizens, although it was slightly challenging due to discrimination and language barriers.
The language was able to thrive on Martha's Vineyard because of the unusually high percentage of deaf islanders and because deafness was a recessive hereditary trait, which meant that almost anyone might have both deaf and hearing siblings. In 1854, when the island's deaf population peaked, the United States national average was one deaf person in 5,728, while on Martha's Vineyard it was one in 155. In the town of Chilmark, which had the highest concentration of deaf people on the island, the average was 1 in 25; in a section of Chilmark called Squibnocket, as much as a quarter of the population of 60 was deaf.
Sign language on the island declined when the population attempted to purify their genetics of deafness and during the introduction of the cochlear implant. There are no fluent signers of MVSL today. The last deaf person born into the island's sign language tradition, Eva West, died in 1950. However, there were a few elderly residents still able to recall MVSL when researchers started examining the language in the 1980s. Linguists are working to save the rare language, however, it is difficult due to the fact that they do not (nor can) experience MVSL first hand.
The hereditary deafness first appeared on Martha's Vineyard by 1714.
The ancestry of most of the deaf population of Martha's Vineyard can be traced back to a forested area in the south of England known as the Weald—specifically the part of the Weald in the county of Kent. Martha's Vineyard Sign Language may be descended from a hypothesized sign language of that area in the 16th century, now referred to as Old Kent Sign Language. Families from a Puritan community in the Kentish Weald emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony area of the United States in the early 17th century, many of their descendants later settling on Martha's Vineyard. The first deaf person known to have settled there was Jonathan Lambert, a carpenter and farmer, who moved there with his hearing wife in 1694. By 1710, the migration had virtually ceased, and the endogamous community that was created contained a high incidence of hereditary deafness that persisted for over 200 years.
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