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Implants Bring Upheaval to Deaf Education The growth of cochlear implants -- electronic devices surgically placed in the bone behind the ear -- is reshaping a longstanding battle over how deaf children should be educated.

Proposed town in South Dakota would be home to users of sign language By CARSON WALKER SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Plans are being debated this week for the creation of a new town with the usual amenities: hotels, a convention centre, retail shops and churches. But one thing will be different: Sign language will be the preferred way to communicate. The town is designed to make life easier and more practical for deaf and hard-of-hearing residents, said Terry Sanford, director of town planning for Nederveld Associates, a Grand Rapids, Mich., company that is overseeing the project. "We want it...

A MAN I KNOW, NED MARKOSIAN, teaches a doctrine called presentism. In presentism the past and the future don't exist. Aristotle is dead; therefore, there was no Aristotle. We meet to talk about this over coffee, maybe the ultimate nonpresentist drink. He has applied for and gotten tenure, and writes and publishes, hurling himself into that unreality, the future. I have been thinking about presentism lately, and consciousness, and language. Linguist Derek Bickerton wrote, "Only language could have broken through the prison of immediate experience in which every other creature is locked, releasing us into infinite freedoms of space...

These bills were signed into law by Governor Edward G. Rendell, July 12. Unless noted, they take effect in 60 days. House Bill 445, sponsored by Rep. Jerry Nailor (R-Cumberland), creates the Sign Language Interpreter and Transliterator State Registration Act.

LONDON -- Changing times have caught up with sign language for deaf people in Britain. Gestures used to depict ethnic and religious minorities and homosexuals are being dropped because they are now deemed offensive. The abandoned signs include "Jewish," in which a hand mimes a hooked nose; the sign for "gay," a flick of a limp wrist, and "Chinese," in which the index fingertips pull the eyes into a slant. Another dropped sign is that for "Indian," which is a finger pointing to an imaginary spot in the middle of a forehead. The signs have been declared off-limits by the...

<p>COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) -- After 23 years of work by some 60 people, a ministry group for the deaf has finished translating the entire New Testament into American Sign Language.</p> <p>Translators appear on camera, signing the New Testament's 7,959 verses. After editing is completed, the translation should be available on DVD and videotape this summer.</p>

Political correctness has caught up with sign language for deaf people. Gestures used to depict ethnic and religious minorities and homosexuals are being dropped because they are now deemed offensive. The abandoned signs include "Jewish", in which a hand mimes a hooked nose; the sign for "gay", a flick of a limp wrist; and "Chinese", in which the index fingertips pull the eyes into a slant. Another dropped sign is that for "Indian", which is a finger pointing to an imaginary spot in the middle of a forehead. The signs have been declared off-limits by the makers of Vee-TV, Channel...

Deaf people are making a profound contribution to the study of language Ann Senghas We all speak smile JUST as biologists rarely see a new species arise, linguists rarely see a new language being born. You have to be in the right place at the right time, which usually you are not. But the past few decades have seen an exception. Linguists have been able to follow the formation of a new language in Nicaragua. The catch is that it is not a spoken language but, rather, a sign language which arose spontaneously in deaf children. Ann Senghas, of Columbia...

Another Language for the Deaf IMAGINE a language that can't be written. Hundreds of thousands of people speak it, but they have no way to read a newspaper or study a schoolbook in the language they use all day long. That is the situation of the quarter-million or more deaf people in North America whose primary language is American Sign Language. Although they form a vast linguistic minority, their language, as complex as any spoken one, has by its very nature defied most attempts to write it down. In recent years, however, a system of graphic symbols based on dance...