This historical account of the development of the manual alphabet in ASL (and of representational systems in other sign languages) traces fingerspelling back to the monks of the seventh century, who ...

The deaf person would learn to associate each letter of the alphabet with a phonetic sound. Bonet’s approach combined oralism—using sounds to communicate—with sign language.

The American Manual Alphabet was chosen because “it comprises a set of 26 standardized gestures, which represent a challenge in engineering to detect using our system of materials.” ...

An 1886 version of the American Sign Language manual alphabet. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing ...