Simon’s manuscript, 1821: First translated text into a sign language

Abstract

Historical studies related to sign languages, have been tightly linked to studies related the formal education of deaf people; while overriding other scopes of action and attention; might be because of the belief, that it was going to be difficult to find something better, of what was daily being done and was found registered and documented in the school; but if we go beyond the scholar frame, this seems to be a completely different reality. The most outstanding example is that of Simon’s manuscript of 1821, in which the potential of the sign language is showed for the first time in the moral and religious education of deaf people. The objective of this article is to present the Scientific Community the manuscript of Francisco de Paula Simón in the historical context, the frame of the bibliographic finding took place and mainly, highlight the importance of the glossary of signs it presents and the syntactic composition of by that time an incipient sign language and its continuity thereafter. A manuscript that will be soon published, highlighting the capacity of communication of the sign language, and the competence of deaf people to adopt it; will help us not only know how our ancestors used signs within their natural and social relationships, but also linguistically deepen in the genesis of the signs it presents, their agreement and diachronic evolution. It constitutes the first frame of reference – a treaty of Christian doctrine in a sign language – for the experts (historians, linguists, interpreters and deaf people) to bring into play their intellectual and manual skills.