Born deaf to deaf parents, identical twins Lola and Ella Scher of Rockville learned from the beginning to talk with their hands. When they were 9 months old, they produced their first word: shoe.
If they had used American Sign Language, or ASL, they would have said "shoe" by tapping their fists together twice. But their parents used a different form of communication, cued speech. So they taught each girl to make an "L" shape with her right hand, touching her index finger to her chin. That wasn't a symbol, like the ASL gesture; instead, it signaled how the word sounds in spoken English. They would have used the same gesture to say "shoo!"
