, 1888-09-07
WHENCE NJ SPEECH?
A STRANGE CASE RECORDED IN
A BOSTON NEWSPAPER.

\ Boston newspaper recently published nm
account of two brothers living in that city.
who, it declares, have grownt to mans estate
without ever being able to speak the English
language, although born in the United States
of American parents, and having heard
English spoken continuously. Their vocal
organs have been examined by the best spe
cialists and found to be perfectly normal.
These brothers, it is asserted, speak a Ian
guage OF their own, which they perfectly
understand, but which, thus far, has been
unintelligible to everybody else. Some words
of the language were given by the journal
referred 10, and n philologist would trace a
resemblance, if nothing more, TO Sanscrit.
But the case referred TO is not without its
parallel. The writer of this article saw, on
more than one occasion, two children, a
brother and sister, living at n little stage
station in the state of Nevada, who had in
vented a language of their own, which they
constantly used in talking with each other.
The girl was 8 or 10 years OF age, aud the
boy a year or two younger. There could be
no deception and no mistake about the INIT
ter. The children would play together and
chatter in this strange speech of their own
deyising, and it was perfectly apparent that
it was not such meaningless gibberish as
children often use in play, but a genuine
language. 1t resembled no language with
"lltu Alt NllAtI HuAl any acquaintance
There conld bs detected no resemblance to
any modern language, no similarity to root
forms or stems which may be said, roughly,
to be common to all spoken languages; nor
was there any likeness to either Latin or
Greek, and, consequently, none to the cog
nate language which is called Sanscrit.
The children were not at all shy about talk
ing in the presence of strangers, but they
could not be made to understand what trans
lation from English into their language
meant. They understood English, and could
and did speak it when spoken to; but they
either could not or would not give the equiva.
Tents of English words in their own language.
The mother OF the children said she could not
in any way account for this strange linguistic
freak. She said that the first time she heard
them, and indeed for many times afterward,
she paid no attention, as she supposed they
were 'only jabbering nonsense as she ex-
pressed IL, and so she was entirely unable to
say whether the language was evolutionary
or whether the children spoke it just as well
the first time as the last. They certainly
spoke enough of it when the writer heard
them TO understand them without any diff
Guilty, although it seemed to the writer from
the cursory observations he could make that
the vocabulary was a very limited one; but
that would have been equally the case with
Cnl4lItI VI blAb dbt niu lntJ Detn speaking
English.
There has been n story in vogue for many
years, although it is impossible to verify it
and it is probably a~pocryphal, that for the
purpose of determining whether there was a
primal language, and if so what it was, two
infants were at one time confined in the Bias
tile and were never allowed to hear a word
Of any language spoken, it being supposed
that nature would supply them with the
means Of communicating with each other as
they grew old enough to talk, and that the
controversy as TO a primal language would
be conclusively determined. The story SAYS,
however, that up to II years of age the chill
dreu never uttered an articulate sound. They
communicated with each other in a fashion,
but it was entirely by signs, and not by any
thing resembling a spoken language of any
kind. The story goes on to say that they
were then released from their confinement
and placed among people where they heard
French spoken all around them, and that
they soon learned to speak the language
which they heard, but never gave any signs
of knowing any other tongue.
The story may be true, or it may not. If
it is, it would tend very strongly to show
that our speech is the result of imitation, AID
that the faculty of articulate speech depends
on the ability to repeat what is gathered from
lue speech Ol OJnefs. MS Wow receives
confirmation from the observation of deaf
and dumb people, who are, as a rule, dumb
because they are deaf. They possess the
vocal organs fully developed, but they can
not speak because they are not able to imi-
tate either the sound of language or the
mechanical vocal efforts o fspeaking persons,
and this, not because of innate inability, but
because Of the lack of a medium of intercom-
munication.
And yet the observation Of the cases in
Massachusetts and Nevada to which we have
referred shows that there must be exceptions
to what would seem TO be n general rule.
Those children in Nevada knew no more of
the accepted theories of philology than they
did of the diderential calculus. They did
not know the first thing about the develop
ment theory; they never heard of the rules
of linguistic structure; and yet they con-
structed for themselves a language which
was, for all practical purposes, just as much
a anEua as Hebrew or Greek or German
or English. 1t meant something to them;
each could understand the other; each could
say what he or she wanted to say, and that
constitutes Language
The Boston case is somewhat different. if
1t is told correctly. In that case there would
seem to be some structural deficiency in the
bra!n-some distorted convolution or some
thing of the sort-for, generally speaking, a
man who can speak one language can speak
every other, at least after a fashion: but
these brothers, it is asserted, cannot speak
English, although they can understand it to
"a certain extent.
These cases, strange as they may be, do not
initiate in any degree against the generally
received doctrines Of philology. They are
freaks of nature, nothing more, and are. IL
we stop to consider, no more strange than
other cases with which we are familiar
san Francisco Chronicle.