In Nicaragua where sign language didn’t exist, in 1981, a new school for the deaf opened. Fifty deaf students enrolled during the school’s first year, and a curious thing happened: they developed their own version of sign language. No one taught them this; they simply began assigning signs and gestures to the things in their environment, and slowly a language emerged, complete with verb tenses and the like, to rival any other language. Spontaneous orders are systems that develop organically. They aren’t designed by a coercive authority. They emerge through countless human interactions undertaken over time. —Antony Davies, James R. Harrigan
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