Researching Nicaragua

We are making steady headway in our report-writing and understanding of sign languages in the Americas. Over the last few months we have turned in lots of reports on countries where we could find enough information on the Internet and by talking to people long-distance to believe that we have a pretty good idea of the sign language situation and development needs there. For example, today we submitted 3 more country reports:

Belize, where all information points to them using American Sign Language and Signed English
Greenland, where all information points to them using Danish Sign Language
and
Quebec, where there is a unique Quebec Sign Language where language development work is being pursued by universities and organizations, but translation work still needs to be done.

I've switched gears to studying Nicaragua now. As some of you may know, Nicaragua's sign language situation has been the focus of a lot of attention because of a debate about language acquisition in the linguistic world. Boiled down probably much too simply, the debate is whether or not we are born with an internal language acquisition device that is unique to humans and makes it so language is innate to us, or whether we are born with certain cognitive abilities that allow us to simply learn language. In Nicaragua, the question emerged when deaf children were brought together who (it is claimed) didn't have a sign language before arriving at the school and after which a unique sign language emerged. There's tons of articles online if you're interested in the topic - in fact, it feels like almost too much to work through as I sort it to get a grasp of the Nicaragua deaf community and whether or not we need to do fieldwork there to draw accurate conclusions.

All of this is actually a precurser to something I thought some of you may be interested in: a chapter telling some deaf Nicaraguan children's stories and a little about the deaf and sign language situation in Nicaragua. I think it's simple, engaging, and perhaps you might get a little more understanding of what it's like to be a deaf kid in a lot of the places we go:

http://www.hesperian.info/assets/Deaf/Deaf_Ch01.pdf