What the World’s Youngest Language Can Teach You About Yourself
The science behind how you’ve got skills to grow programmed right in your DNA.
What would happen if a group of children was left on an island without adult supervision? Would they find a way to communicate with each other and create their own fluent language?
Of course, such an experiment is too cruel to conduct. But something similar happened in the Central American nation of Nicaragua.
In the 1980s, a group of deaf children ranging in age from 4 to 16 was raised together at the Melania Morales Special Education Center. Having had no prior exposure to sign language, these children found ways to communicate with each other using their hands. They copied each other’s gestures and expanded their repertoires as a common vocabulary began to develop among them.
When the teachers discovered how effective this form of communication was, a group of linguists studied the phenomenon. What they found baffled the entire world: the deaf children had developed a fully-functional language, complete with unique vocabulary, grammar, and syntax.
The youngest language in the world was born: the Nicaraguan Sign Language.
