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@modulux Oralism is heartbreaking, honestly. The background is that English is a second language for the deaf. Oralists thought deaf kids would be better at English - and hence more integrated into hearing society - if they just didn't learn sign language. But that's not what you get when kids get severely impoverished language input during their critical period. You just cripple their language faculty for LIFE. It's harder for them to learn any language, including English. HEARTBREAKING.
@modulux But in a deaf boarding school you can't stop deaf kids from signing. So some educators decided to compromise by creating a sign language that they called Signing Exact English. As far as possible, content words use the handshape from the fingerspelling alphabet that matches the first letter in English. And they sign every last English grammatical affix, like plural -s and participial -ing. I understand it is incredibly annoying and unnatural.
@modulux That's how oralism led to ASL losing so many of its original handshapes.