Old French Sign Language (, often abbreviated as VLSF) was the

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

of the

deaf community Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an audiological condition. In this context it is written ...

in 18th-century

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

at the time of the establishment of the first deaf schools. The earliest records of the language are in the work of the

Abbé de l'Épée ''Abbé'' (from Latin , in turn from Greek , , from Aramaic ''abba'', a title of honour, literally meaning "the father, my father", emphatic state of ''abh'', "father") is the French word for an abbot. It is also the title used for lower-ranki ...

, who stumbled across two sisters communicating in signs and, through them, became aware of a signing community of 200 deaf Parisians. Records of the language they used are scant. Épée saw their signing as beautiful but primitive, and rather than studying or recording it, he set about developing his own unique sign system (), which borrowed signs from Old French Sign Language and combined them with an idiosyncratic morphemic structure which he derived from the

French language French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-R ...

. The term "Old French Sign Language" has occasionally been used to describe Épée's "systematised signs", and he has often been (erroneously) cited as the inventor of sign language. Épée, however, influenced the language of the deaf community, and modern

French Sign Language French Sign Language (, LSF) is the sign language of deaf and hard-of-hearing people in France and in French-speaking parts of Switzerland. According to ''Ethnologue'', it has 100,000 native signers. French Sign Language is related and part ...

can be said to have emerged in the schools that Épée established. As deaf schools inspired by Épée's model sprung up around the world, the language was to influence the development of many other sign languages, including

American Sign Language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that i ...

. From the dictionaries of "systematised signs" that the Abbé de l'Épée and his successor, Abbé

Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard (; 20 September 1742 – 10 May 1822) was a French abbé and instructor of the deaf. Born at Le Fousseret, in the ancient Province of Languedoc (now the Department of Haute-Garonne), and educated as a priest, Sicard ...

, published, one can see that many of the signs described have direct descendants in sign languages today.

Pierre Desloges Pierre Desloges was a French author of books about sign language and politics. He was born in 1747 in the Touraine region of France and moved to Paris as a young man, where he became a bookbinder and upholsterer. He was deafened at age seven from s ...

, who was deaf himself and a contemporary of the Abbe de l'Épée, partially described Old French Sign Language in what was possibly the first book ever to be published by a deaf person (1779). The language certainly used of the possibilities of a spatial grammar. One of the grammatical features noted by Desloges was the use of directional verbs, such as the verb "to want". From the few descriptions that exist, modern linguists are unable to build up a complete picture of Old French Sign Language, but ongoing research continues to uncover more pieces of the puzzle. It is not known how the language was acquired or how long the language had been developing before Épée established his school. However, evidence suggests that whenever a large enough population of deaf people exists, a sign language will spontaneously arise (cf.

Nicaraguan Sign Language Nicaraguan Sign Language (ISN; ) is a form of sign language developed by deaf children in several schools in Nicaragua. History Before the 1970s, a deaf community largely socializing with and amongst each other was not present in Nicaragua. Deaf ...

). As Paris had been the largest city in France for hundreds of years (and with 565,000 inhabitants in 1750), French Sign Language is a good candidate for one of the oldest sign languages in Europe. Old French Sign Language is not related to

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

, which was spoken from roughly 1000 to 1300.

References

{{sign language navigation French Sign Language family Sign languages of France Extinct sign languages Languages attested from the 18th century