Chapters 1 and 2: Origins of ASL and Worldly Variations

When I signed up for ASL I, I assumed it was based off of English.  I find it quite interesting that it has more French influences.  I also had never realized that the ability of deaf people to both sign ASL and write English makes them bilingual.  I can't imagine what it would be like to grow up without a language as many children did before schools for the deaf.  It was only briefly mentioned in chapter 1 that gorillas can learn and communicate with ASL, but that along side thinking about how frustrating it must have been for deaf children to not have a language makes me wonder if it is almost as cruel not to give gorilla children language as it seems cruel not to give human children a language.  A couple of years ago I read the book Congo by Michael Crichton.  In it there was a gorilla named Amy who communicated with ASL.  While in the Congo she left the group of researchers she was with.  Later she was seen with a baby gorilla who could sign.  I know this is fiction but I wonder if ASL would take off and be passed from mother to child with gorillas if enough gorillas in a certain area were taught ASL.  Perhaps that would just be forcing our culture on them though, as we have tried to force our culture on humans with different cultures before.  I would like to learn more about gorillas and ASL and the different positions of those who think it is beneficial to gorillas and those who think it is forcing our culture on a society that doesn't need or want our help.  Are we even teaching it to them in the first place for their sake though, or are we doing it to study brain patters or something for the benefit of humans?  I kinda doubt we would be doing something to help a different species without getting something out of it for ourselves.  Otherwise, who would fund it?  Humans are so selfish.  Not only do we only look out for our own species, but we often narrow it even more to those of our species who we can relate to.  Before the concern of people like Cogswell and Gallaudet, the majority of Americans were content to sit by while deaf children were institutionalized, trapped forever in their own minds except for "home signs" that were not recognized by those who did not know them well or who didn't care enough to take the time to try to understand them.  The majority does not understand what it is like to be deaf, so the majority labeled the deaf as inferior and even signing as inferior to speech when it started to become more widely used.  Even those who had deaf children and did not want to institutionalize them only looked out for the interest of their own children, hiring tutors or sending them over seas to a fancy school that did not want to let its methods be widely known without making a profit.  There are so few people who are truly exceptional, people who will act for the good of others in situations they cannot really understand and spark a change in societal norms.

At first it rather annoyed me that ASL is not a universal language, and especially that British sign language is so different when American and British spoken languages are the same.  I suppose it comes down to culture again, though.  Maintaining the culture of a region is important, but as the world becomes a smaller place through technology and trade, the development of more forms of universal communication would be very practical.  It greatly impressed me the relative ease with which Gestuno is apparently picked up by deaf individuals.  I wonder if learning it for international communication would be simpler than trying to get everyone to learn English or Mandarin or whatever languages the leading super powers speak.