"Sign language" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ignorance of Russian and the sign language, but watched him as I continued my conversation in English. Thereupon my man repeated his demands in excellent French, with a good ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... generally. In historic times there is ample evidence of inter-tribal trade. Were positive evidence lacking, Indian institutions would disclose the fact. Differences in language were obviated by the sign language,[10] a fixed system of communication, intelligible to all the western tribes at least. The peace pipe,[11] or calumet, was used for settling disputes, strengthening alliances, and speaking to strangers—a sanctity attached to it. Wampum belts served in New England and the middle region as money ...
— The Character and Influence of the Indian Trade in Wisconsin • Frederick Jackson Turner
... smile and her inability to speak any English word. The smile had a permanent look, and I reasoned that an inability to speak English would be a bar to her getting away. We should not mind it much ourselves. Having had everything from a Pole to a Patagonian, we were experts on sign language, and rather favored it after the flow of English we had just survived. I personally conducted Lena to the train and landed her safely ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... grinned and bowed his head. He shot his fingers in the air and began a rapid-fire conversation. Madge and Phil watched him, feeling utterly helpless. The sign language had not been included in their education. There was nothing for them to do but ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... up to the witchery of the hour. It would not be easy to reproduce in type all that they said; and what was most important to them, and would be most interesting to the reader, are the things they did not say—the half exclamations, the delightful silences, the tones, the looks that are the sign language of lovers. It was Irene who first broke the spell of this delightful mode of communication, and in a pause of the music said, "Your cousin has been telling me of your relatives in New York, and she told me more of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... saddle with its high pommel and cantle, was fascinating after an English one. Foothills and arroyos were a charming part of one's walk after the boulevards and parks of Chicago. She hugely enjoyed chatting in sign language with the Mexicans and Indians on the place, and before a week had passed she had picked up a number of Spanish phrases which she used ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... in dismay. If he, too, intended to talk in nothing but the oral sign language, she had a wild idea of joining the frivolous crowd on the afterdeck, where at least ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... Give an Indian war whoop. 2. Do an Indian war dance. 3. Give Indian names to five people here. 4. Make a speech in sign language. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... the emotion. The research upon the communication of emotions and ideas proceeded from natural signs to gesture and finally to language. Genetic psychologists pointed out that the natural gesture is an abbreviated act. Mallery's investigation upon "Sign Language among North American Indians Compared with that among Other Peoples and Deaf Mutes" disclosed the high development of communication by gestures among Indian tribes. Wilhelm Wundt in his study of the origin of speech indicated the intimate ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... number of the deaf do not use the speech which is used by those who can hear, how is it that their communication is carried on? The chief method is a certain silent tongue peculiar to the deaf, known as the "sign language,"[12] a part of which may be said to be the manual alphabet, or the system of finger-spelling,[13] the two usually going hand in hand. In this way most of the deaf are enabled to communicate with each other readily and fluently. But this language, ...
— The Deaf - Their Position in Society and the Provision for Their - Education in the United States • Harry Best
... me hear about it, because I'm pretty dull when it comes to understanding all this lovely sign language of the Indians," ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... were intelligent, and would understand my sign language. But what magic power have you at your disposal, that you were able to ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... Average Jones. "Therefore, I'm a mute. A shock in early childhood paralyzed my centers of speech. I talk to you by sign language, and you interpret." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hours and watch him and the others talk to the Indians in the sign language. Without a sound they would carry on long and interesting conversations, tell stories, inquire about game and trails, and discuss pretty much everything that men ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... in the shadow of the pilot house and were indistinguishable to anyone below in the shipyard, they could still see each other. Jack touched Frank and Tom lightly and then using the sign language employed by mutes he ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... had a language which we could understand, even if they did not talk out loud. The birds, too, have a language of their own, and they can express themselves better than the flowers, for they have a sign language, and are also able to make sounds. How much we enjoy hearing the birds sing, not only because they make beautiful music, but because they are telling us how happy ...
— Confidences - Talks With a Young Girl Concerning Herself • Edith B. Lowry
... an old Indian woman with gray hair came into the church. She could not talk much, but in their sign language I asked, "Are you a Christian?" "Yes, yes," she replied; "I could not live if Jesus leave me," and then making the sign as if washing on a wash-board, and the sign for spirit (soul), pointing to my white cuff—Jesus has washed my soul white—do they not ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 01, January, 1900 • Various
... "Just so. The sign language was universal. The old school on the village green succeeded the river and the mill in your history. Miss Primby taught it, dear old soul, gentler than a mother even, and you laughed at her curls, and her funny ways, which hid from ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... N,' sir," stammered out the man, who was rapidly turning over the pages of the signal book, seeking the meaning of the flags in that dictionary of the sign language of the sea, and missing what he sought to find in his hurry. ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... calmly. "She wasn't saying anything about you at all. She and Hinpoha were playing a game, a very clever and original game, by the way, having an auction sale in sign language. Sahwah bought all the figures but one, and then, wishing a diversion, refused the last one. It just happened to be the one ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... inviting field for research is, however, furnished by the primitive methods of counting and of giving visible expression to the idea of number. Our starting-point must, of course, be the sign language, which always precedes intelligible speech; and which is so convenient and so expressive a method of communication that the human family, even in its most highly developed branches, never wholly lays it aside. It may, indeed, ...
— The Number Concept - Its Origin and Development • Levi Leonard Conant
... city. They could not make themselves understood, nor could they understand others, and became very lonely. They were taken to visit a deaf-and-dumb institution, where they were quite delighted to find that they could converse freely by the use of a natural sign language. ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... found company. It was a blue flower. It grew close to my tent, as high as my knee, and during the day I used to spread out my blanket close to it and lie there and smoke. And the blue flower would wave on its slender stem, an' bob at me, an' talk in sign language that I imagined I understood. Sometimes it was so funny and vivacious that I laughed, and then it seemed to be inviting me to a dance. And at other times it was just beautiful and still, and seemed ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... Llewellen or O'Neill, had been through what was better worth telling, or could tell it better, than Capron. He had spent years among the Apaches, the wildest and fiercest of tribes, and again and again had owed his life to his own cool judgment and extraordinary personal prowess. He knew the sign language, familiar to all the Indians of the mountains and the plains; and it was curious to find that the signs for different animals, for water, for sleep and death, which he knew from holding intercourse with the tribes of the Southeast, were exactly like those which I had picked up on my occasional ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... disillusion, mutual distrust, a language of outspread hands, raised eyebrows, portentous shakings of the head. Frau Schwarz, on the edge of Peter's tub-shaped bed, needed no English to convey the fact that Peter was a bad lot. Not that she resorted only to the sign language. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sprang up for yams, bananas, m'wembe meal, eggs, and milk. No shrewder bargainer exists than your African safari man, and these soon discovered that beads and wire possessed great purchasing power in this unsophisticated country. The bartering had to be done in sign language, as Swahili seemed to be unknown; and no man in the safari understood this unknown tongue. Kingozi sat in state before his tent, smoking his pipe—which he still enjoyed in spite of his blindness—and awaiting ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... last note, which was a trifle too human. But the signal was well done; it was an expert calling, either an Indian or some thoroughly seasoned scout; yet Quonab was not deceived into thinking it an owl. He touched his cheek and his coat, which, in the scout sign language, means "red coat," i. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... scart she'll come off. Call this a road!" he snorted indignantly. "More like a plowed field a consider'ble sight. Jerushy, how she blows! No wonder they raise so many deef and dumb folks in Trumet. I'd talk sign language myself if I lived here. What's the use of wastin' strength pumpin' up words when they're blowed back down your throat fast enough to choke you? Git dap, Henry! Don't you see the meetin' house steeple? We're most there, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... this critter am different. He am so deef he can't hear me when Ah speaks to him in de usual way, so Ah has to communicate wid him in de sign language." ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... uttered, pictures or characters drawn, or letters made as means of expression. The deaf-mute converses with his fingers and his lips; the savage communicates by means of gesticulation. It is easy to conceive of a community in which all communication is carried on in sign language. It is said that the Grebos of Africa carry this mode of expression {122} to such an extent that the persons and tenses of the mood are indicated with ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... captain, while informing himself of the available dishes, was secretly following the discreet sign language of the waiter. With one hand he was holding the door half open, his fingers fumbling with an enormous archaic bolt on the under side which had belonged to a much larger door and looked as though it were going to fall from the wood ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez |
