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Martha's Vineyard Sign Language
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=== Deaf migration to the mainland === In the early 19th century, a new educational philosophy began to emerge on the mainland, and the country's first school for the deaf opened in 1817 in [[Hartford, Connecticut]] (now called the [[American School for the Deaf]]). Many of the deaf children of Martha's Vineyard enrolled there, taking their sign language with them. The language of the teachers was [[French Sign Language]], and many of the other deaf students used their own [[home sign|home-sign]] systems. This school became known as the birthplace of the [[deaf community]] in the United States, and the different sign systems used there, including MVSL, merged to become [[American Sign Language]] or ASLโnow one of the largest community languages in the country. As more deaf people remained on the mainland, and others who returned brought with them deaf spouses they met there (whose hearing loss may not have been due to the same hereditary cause), the line of hereditary deafness began to diminish. At the outset of the 20th century, the previously isolated community of fishers and farmers began to see an influx of tourists that would become a mainstay in the island's economy. Jobs in tourism were not as deaf-friendly as fishing and farming had been, and as intermarriage and migration joined the people of Martha's Vineyard to the mainland, the island community grew to resemble the wider community there more and more. The last deaf person born into the island's sign-language tradition, Katie West, died in 1952.<ref name=":0" /> A few elderly residents were able to recall MVSL as recently as the 1980s when research into the language began. Indeed, when [[Oliver Sacks]] subsequently visited the island after reading a book on the subject,<ref name="Groce1985">{{cite book |last=Groce |first=Nora Ellen |title=Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1985 |isbn=0-674-27041-X |location=Cambridge, MA |quote=}}</ref> he noted that a group of elderly islanders talking together dropped briefly into sign language then back into speech.<ref name="Sacks">{{cite book |last=Sacks |first=Oliver |title=Seeing Voices: a Journey Into the World of the Deaf |title-link=Seeing Voices |publisher=[[University of California Press]] |year=1989 |isbn=0520060830 |place=Berkeley |author-link=Oliver Sacks}}</ref>
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