Bom dia, boa tarde, e boa noite, meus ‘Cados! 

This is the Brazilian Gringo (aka Ice Cream Planet) and today, I wanted to discuss Língua Brasileira de Sinais (aka Libras), otherwise known as Brazilian Sign Language. the origins of Libras com from French Sign Language, although the language has developed its own unique identity since the 19th century. From UOL (translated into English):

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Here in Brazil, the pioneer in deaf education was the French professor Ernest Huet , who moved to Brazil in 1855 at the invitation of Emperor Pedro II . Here in Brazil, Huet was behind the creation of the first school dedicated to the education of the deaf, the so-called Imperial Institute for Deaf-Mutes .

This institute was created by Law No. 839 , of September 26, 1857, and received only male students as a boarding school. The French professor, who was also deaf, taught and directed the school. However, in 1861, Huet abandoned the direction of the institute and went to Mexico.

It was through Huet that French Sign Language was brought to Brazil, and it was because of him the foundations were laid for the creation of a Brazil-specific sign language known as Libras. Libras was consolidated from signs that were already used in Brazil, along with the influence of French Sign Language and the signs created by L’Epée, called “methodical signs”.

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Given the ongoing abuse of the deaf community, exacerbated by the Milan Congress in 1880, which advocated for the banning of teaching of sign language and focusing solely on the so-called “superiority” of oralism (oral education), Libras wouldn’t be taken seriously as a language for the deaf Brazilian community until after the 1988 Constitution was signed. In fact, it wasn’t legally recognized as a language until 24 April, 2002 (coincidentally, the 24th of April is the National Sign Language Day in Brazil). However, in the decades since, there has been a concentrated push to incorporate Libras into more facets of Brazilian society, from school curriculums and governmental work to increased access in the audiovisual industry. 



Libras uses a one-handed manual alphabet and SignWriting is the written system for Libras. As noted in the aforementioned UOL, the author Daniel Neves states:

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Unlike spoken Portuguese, which relies on the voice as its channel, Libras relies directly on movements and facial expressions to be understood by the message’s recipient.

A negative sentence, for instance, is interpreted through head movement, while a question is understood as such via a facial expression of doubt. These facial expressions serve to complement the meaning of sentences in Libras; consequently, the language is classified as belonging to the visual-gestural modality.

One of the key factors defining Libras as a language is its unique grammatical organization. Its sentence structures, for example, do not mirror those of Portuguese. Clause constructions in Libras are more concise and flexible, even though they generally follow a subject-verb-object pattern. For instance, the sentence “I am going to the movies later tonight” might be conveyed in Libras as “I-cinema-today-night” or “Today-night-cinema.”

Another important point is that every word in Libras has a specific sign; when a sign does not yet exist, the word can be identified through fingerspelling—that is, by spelling it out using the Libras manual alphabet.

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As of 2021, the estimated number of signers is about 630,000, and the number is increasing as it becomes more widely taught through the school system. It is a language I hope to learn one day myself.

 

Have a great day, afternoon, evening, ‘cados!