5.5 Sign language in Estonia

In Estonia, the first historical accounts of deafness and the problems related to it originate from the 17th century (Kuulmisrehabilitatsiooni programm, projekt 1996:17). The teaching of the deaf in Estonia is said to have begun at the beginning of the 18th century in Pärnu (Kotsar & Kotsar 1997:67). Nevertheless, ideas about founding a school for the deaf in Estonia spread more than one hundred years after the first school for the deaf was established in Paris in the 1770s (1760), by Abbé Charles Michel de l’Epée. A local pastor, Ernst Sokolovski (1833-1899) can be regarded as the founder of the teaching of the deaf in Estonia. It was under his guidance that the first school for the deaf was opened in Vändra in 1866 (Karu 1936:4-7). From that time on we can speak of continuous teaching of the deaf in Estonia: a boarding-school existed in Vändra for 60 years (1866-1924), which was moved to Porkuni in 1924 and has been educating the deaf until now. In the autumn of 2000, this school will not admit deaf children any more (EKLVL 1999:6), as the Tallinn Deaf School, which was opened in 1994, has taken over its function. Tartu Hiie School (which separated from the Porkuni Deaf School in 1941) also continues teaching the deaf.

Until the 1990s the teaching method in Porkuni was purely oral and a strong opposition to signs and the possibility of a sign language prevailed.⁶ It was the auditory training and lip-reading which held a prominent place in educating the deaf; the communication system among the deaf was considered to be a spoken language which was only supported by signs.

At the beginning of the 1990s, Vahur Laiapea and Ave Paat (then known as Ave Laiapea) began to take interest in the communication system used among the deaf themselves in Estonia. They succeeded in raising awareness that this communication system is a linguistically complete language, and the native language of many deaf people. Their contribution to creating contacts with sign language researchers in other countries, and to bringing to Estonia a more modern approach to the sign language cannot be overestimated. Of great importance is also the fact that in 1994, with the opening of the Tallinn Deaf School, a bilingual teaching method (i.e. the acquisition of the Estonian language and school subjects through the sign language) was put into practice under the direction of Ave Paat (the Director of the Tallinn Deaf School).

Considering the fact that sign language was not accepted in the educational environment until the 1990s, it is difficult to speak of an ‘Estonian Sign Language.’ Vahur Laiapea (manuscript of an unpublished M. A. thesis) writes that it is very likely that the sign language which is used by the Estonian deaf community nowadays began to develop with the opening of the first school for the deaf in Vändra in 1866 as a result of constant communication between the deaf themselves.

According to Regina Toom (in personal communication, 27.01.2000), there exists a great variation of signing in Estonia, ranging from the oral speech supported by signs to varieties which have markedly been shaped by the properties of the Estonian language, particularly by word order. However, according to my own experience, there seems to be a variety of signing which shows little influence of Estonian (especially with regard to signing between the deaf themselves).

Unfortunately, at present there is no description of any of these varieties, and the overall knowledge of the rules which govern the combining of signs into sentences is very limited. This does not mean, of course, that people to whom sign language is their first language, or people for whom sign language is the primary means of communication, do not know how to sign: they know the rules intuitively and use them when signing. Still, the grammar rules of ESL should be described in order to work out a method of teaching ESL (which at the moment is lacking (EKLVL 1999:5; Laiapea 1990)).

Although in his M. A. thesis on ESL Vahur Laiapea gives an overview of the main structural features of ESL, there is still no thorough description of ESL.⁷ Thus, Estonian Sign Language exists in reality, but is unstudied in linguistic terms (Laiapea 1990:35).

Furthermore, Estonian Sign Language, unlike, for example, Swedish Sign Language, Finnish Sign Language, Lithuanian Sign Language, does not have an official status as a language yet. That is, officially the deaf in Estonia are regarded as linguistically challenged and not as a language minority (Laiapea 1990). (See a discussion about the status of ESL in Laiapea (1990:34-37); also an overview of the self-determination of the deaf in Estonia in Paavel & Toom (1991:616-629)).