Human speech is a means of communication that is turned to hearing, and it can only be fully mastered through hearing. If a person is born deaf or hearing impaired in early childhood, the development of speech becomes extremely difficult, and deafness develops into deaf-mute.
For any disability, compensatory mechanisms come into play: the absence or weakness of one function is compensated for by others. People with severe hearing impairments use vision-related communication devices. At the same time, a "tool" is involved, which is always "with you" - hands.
Deaf-mute communication with each other
Deaf-mute people use two types of sign systems - fingerprint and sign language.
The fingerprint alphabet is a system of manual signs corresponding to letters. A hand clenched into a fist denotes the letter "a", a palm with straightened, clenched fingers and a large set aside - "c", etc. Such ABCs vary from language to language. In some countries (for example, in the UK) they are dactylated with two hands.
The Russian dactyl alphabet assumes dactylation with one hand (the right one is more often used, but this does not matter). The arm is bent at the elbow, the hand is in front of the chest.
In sign language, gestures do not indicate individual letters or sounds, but whole words and concepts. There are sign languages that have developed specifically in the communication of deaf people, which differ in structure from verbal languages, and fake sign language that reproduces the structure of verbal. It is a kind of "bridge" between the language of the deaf and the language of the hearing.
Usually deaf-mute people use sign language as the main, and dactyl as the auxiliary, denoting names, names, special terms - in short, all that for which there are no concepts-gestures.
