His name was Bender. At first I did not like him. Yet I would
hang on his lips, striving to memorize every English word I could
catch and watching intently, not only his enunciation, but also his
gestures, manners, and mannerisms, and accepting it all as part and
parcel of the American way of speaking Sign language, which was
the chief means of communication in the early days of mankind,
still holds its own. It retains sway over nations of the highest
culture with tongues of unlimited wealth and variety. And the
gestures of the various countries are as different as their spoken
languages. The gesticulations and facial expressions with which
an American will supplement his English are as distinctively
American as those of a Frenchman are distinctively French. One
can tell the nationality of a stranger by his gestures as readily as
by his language. In a vague, general way I had become aware of
this before, probably from contact with some American-born Jews
whose gesticulations, when they spoke Yiddish, impressed me as
utterly un-Yiddish.
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