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It is unknown when the first attempts were made to represent a spoken language with gesture. Indeed, some have speculated that spoken languages may have evolved from sign languages, and there may be undocumented cases in history when spoken and signed modes of a language existed side by side. It is not uncommon for people to develop gestures to replace words or phrases in contexts where speech is not possible or not permitted, such as in a [[television studio]], but these are usually limited in scope and rarely develop into complete representations of a spoken language. One of the most elaborated examples of this kind of auxiliary manual system is [[Walpiri Sign Language]], a complete signed mode of [[Warlpiri language|spoken Warlpiri]] which was developed by an Indigenous community in [[central Australia]] due to cultural proscriptions against speech.
In [[seventh century]] England, [[Bede]], a [[Benedictine]] monk, proposed a system for representing the letters of the [[Latin alphabet]] on the fingers. [[Monastic Sign Language]]s used throughout [[medieval Europe]] used [[manual alphabet]]s as well as signs, and were capable of representing at least the written form of a spoken language, if one had enough patience. Aside from the commonly understood rationale of observing "[[Vow of silence|vows of silence]]", they also served as [[mnemonic]]s (memory aids) for preachers. These manual alphabets began to be used to teach the deaf children of royalty in [[17th century]] Spain, marking the beginning of the era of Manually Coded Languages in deaf education. Such alphabets are in widespread use today by signing deaf communities for representing words or phrases of the spoken language used in their part of the world.
The earliest known attempt to develop a complete signed mode of a language which could be used to teach deaf children was by the [[Abbé de l'Épée]], an educator from [[18th century]] France. While the Deaf community already used a sign language (now known as [[Old French Sign Language]]), Épée thought it must be primitive, and set about designing a complete visual-gestural system to represent the concepts of religion and law that he wanted to impart to his pupils. His system of ''signes méthodiques'' (known in English as "Methodical Signs") was quite idiosyncratic, and although it wasn't a strict representation of French, its success laid the groundwork for the "[[#Signed spoken languages|signed spoken languages]]" of today. The real proliferation of such systems occurred in the latter half of the [[20th century]], and by the [[1980s]], Manually Coded Languages were the dominant form of communication used by teachers and interpreters in classrooms with deaf students in many parts of the world. Any sign language "[[interpreting]]" seen on television in the 1970s and 1980s was actually a [[transliteration]] of a spoken language into a manually coded form.
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