Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • This video was made possible by Curiosity Stream.

  • Get the CuriosityStream/Nebula bundle deal for an all-time low sale price of $1 a month

  • at CuriosityStream.com/HAI.

  • So, in the late 1970s, the dastardly Sandinistas came to power in Nicaragua and decided to

  • do something evil and frankly rather disgusting: provide education for all the children.

  • This cruel, red-led literary crusade forced kids out of the household and into life-sized

  • centers for Kids Who Can't Read Good; which resulted not only in kids reading gooder,

  • but also in them developing a new language from scratch.

  • You see, until the 1970s, Nicaragua had no real deaf communitywhich meant isolated

  • deaf children's only means of communication were whatever rudimentary, mimic-styled signs

  • they invented to communicate needs to their usually hearing families.

  • But then, the Sandinistas took deaf 4 to 16-year olds, put them together in the country's

  • first deaf schools, and brought in Eastern German educators to teach the kids Spanish

  • sign language, which mostly involved teaching them how to use letter signs to spell out

  • Spanish words.

  • This wasn't very useful, though, largely because the deaf kids had never been taught

  • to read, so they didn't have a clear concept of what a word wasor what a letter was

  • and also, importantly, they did not speak Spanishbecause again, they were deaf.

  • Rather than listening with their eyes to how their teachers wanted them to communicate,

  • the children did something far cooler and Half as Interestinger: they started to communicate

  • amongst themselves.

  • Because of the unusual confluence of circumstancesthey were all coming from isolated villages, without

  • knowing how to read, and without ever being taught to speak any other languagethat

  • meant they had to invent a completely new language from scratch at the same age as when

  • most of us were putting crayons into places they didn't belong.

  • Now, it's tough to identify when a new language is taking shape right in front of your eyes,

  • but luckily for us, the ignored and unsuccessful teachers called for backup.

  • Unable to get through to the children, but recognizing that the kids were communicating

  • with one another, Nicaraguan education officials brought in a cunning American linguist, Judy

  • Kegl, in 1986, to figure out what the kids were talking about.

  • To make sense of what these kids were saying in a language disconnected from any established

  • dialect, Kegl basically had to make a Rosetta stone: to get the kids to communicate something

  • in their sign language that she already knew in her own language.

  • So, pre-empting the 8 million movie recap podcasts that now plague the world, she showed

  • each student a 90-second cartoon and then filmed them describing what they had just

  • watched.

  • Once she translated it, she had two findings.

  • First, this language wasn't just a bunch of vocab bundled togetherthis language

  • had rules.

  • Take, for example, their sign forspeak.”

  • At first, it was simple: a hand opening and closing in front of their mouth.

  • But then, they changed it, so that they would start the sign with the hand open at the speaker's

  • position, but move it forward to the position of the person being addressed, where they

  • would close it.

  • That little motion is a huge dealby incorporating information about the subject and object of

  • a verb, the kids had intuited the concept of verb agreement, which is pretty impressive

  • considering that you, the viewer, do not know what verb agreement is.

  • The second thing she found was that the older children, the original architects of this

  • language, leaned on rather rudimentary signingonly a few signs to describe the whole clipwhile

  • the younger students signed more complicated, time-sensitive summaries of the cartoon.

  • This told her that the language was growing and maturing from one generation to the next.

  • Ultimately, she was able to separate the language's development into three stages.

  • First were the home signs—a few basic signs, usually just acting something out, that each

  • kid had developed in their own individual home with their usually hearing parents.

  • When the deaf kids came together, though, they sort of combined all their home signs

  • to develop a basic pidginnot the kind Piers Morgan fed in Home Alone 2, but a limited,

  • simplified language traditionally used to communicate between people who don't share

  • a common tongue.

  • That basic pidgin was called Lenguaje de Signos Nicaragense, which according to Google, translates

  • toAbout 899,000 results.”

  • But the key component came nextyounger students came in, quickly mastered the basic

  • pidgin developed by the older students, and then without even meaning to, elevated it

  • to a real, full-on language, which linguists called the idioma, or Nicaraguan Sign Language.

  • Now, all this suggested that groups of young children possess a semi-mystical, unconscious,

  • and incredibly powerful ability to not only understand, but develop languagesomething

  • that we kind of already knew based on how good kids are at coming up with new ways to

  • make fun of adults.

  • By continually communicating with each other, adjusting, and innovating, they come to consensus

  • about adopting new signs, dropping others, and developing a grammatical system.

  • It's one of humankind's most remarkable abilities, rivaled only by the ability to

  • eat 75 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

  • Because people can never just let a nice thing be nice, this example was quickly jumped on

  • by experts to prove various linguistic theories, including the highly controversial concept

  • of innate speaker capacity.

  • It's a theory developed by linguist and anarchist Dumbledore Noam Chomsky, which argues

  • that grammar is in part a function of innate human geneticsthat there is a universal

  • grammar programmed into our DNAwhich in part explains both why children are so incredibly

  • good at learning language, and why all human languages share relatively similar structures.

  • In the end, the point is that I couldn't think of a good ending for this video, so

  • here's the sign the kids came up with for raccoon.

  • While I don't know any other cool vocab or how to end my videos, I do know that we

  • made a Nebula Plus companion video to this compiling all the jokes we cut because they

  • were lame, rude, or too long.

  • I also know that CuriosityStream is currently hosting a massive Earth Day sale where subscriptions

  • are 41% offwhich comes out well under a dollar a month.

  • And then I also know that any CuriosityStream subscription initiated at CuriosityStream.com/HAI

  • includes a free Nebula subscription.

  • And therefore I know that now is the perfect time to sign up if you haven't already.

  • Also, on CuriosityStream, you can, for example, learn about how past societies pulled off

  • marvelous projects like the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China in Ancient Engineering.

  • If you're still in the mood for more documentaries after that, you can also check our new Nebula

  • Original profiling an Alaskan community struggling to hold on after the shutdown of the cruise

  • ship industry.

  • This Earth Day deal ends this Sunday, so sign up today for a year of CuriosityStream and

  • Nebula for less than a dollar a month at CuriosityStream.com/HAI.

This video was made possible by Curiosity Stream.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it