Kansas City daily journal., 1896-12-27
SPEECH FOR THE TOTALLY DEAF.
Is n Wonderful Achievement to Teach
Them to Use Language Properly.

Them to Use Language Properly.
The hearing child just learning to talk is
quite unintelligible at first, but gradually
the organs learn their lesson, and utter
ance grows distinct. But the ear is the
guide and critic of these early attempts.
The deaf child, however, hears no sound,
and sees only the slight movements of the
lips and tongue, and can never learn to
speak by his own unaided observation and
imitation of those motions. The teacher
must furnish the correction and training
that the ear ordinarily supplies. The teach
ing of speech to totally deaf child who
has never spoken is truly a wonderful
achievement. He has no conception of
sound, and can never have; for the only
sense by which he can be taught the ex-
istence of such thing Is that of touch,
which simply gives him a knowledge of the
motions that accompany sound, but are no
more the sound itself than the vibrations
that produce heat are the sensation we
call warmth.
To train the deaf child's organs to take
their proper positions for the utterance Of
words as unconsciously as those of a hear
ing person is a very slow process. The de-
velopment of any set of reflex actions is a
laborious task even where mistakes can
be recognized and corrected by the learner
himself; in this case, however, the learner
cannot correct his own errors, but must
rely upon the alert ear of his teacher to
keep him from acquiring a wrong set of
reflex actions and forming habits that it
will be almost impossible to break up.
Side by side with articulation comes the
task of teaching language. Imagine your
self in country whose speech you did not
know, and whose Inhabitants did not un-
derstand yours. Imagine, in addition, that
you were suddenly deprived of your hear
ing. How well do you think you would
, succeed in learning the new language? Yet
the congenitally deaf child is under even a
greater disadvantage than this. He is not
only in a foreign land, the language of
which he does not understand. but, to be-
gin with, he has no conception of what Ian
guage is. He has no language of his own
which can be used as a framework on
which and by which to build the new. If
he is more than 2 years old, he may
have invented for himself a few natural.
gestural signs to indicate isolated objects
or the simple needs of his body, such as
hungry, tired, thirsty; but these signs can
no more be called language than the diff
ferent movements of a dogs tail and ears
which indicate his feelings or his wants
can be dignified by that name. He has no
conception of a structurally connected
means of expression.
Is it any wonder, then, If, after some
years of instruction, the teacher OCCASION
boy in his journal after coming to school
one cold March morning: THE wind Is
very blew. and I am little shiver."? Or
this substitution of act for implement:
1.-The man chopped the ground with his
dig, and the dog hurrahed with his wag"?
The irregularities and inconsistencies of
English grammar and spelling make 1t
much harder, of course, to teach the deaf,
and no class of people would be more
| greatly benefited by a strictly phonetic
spelling and an exceptionless grammar
than they. That the deaf child is not
frightened by these Irregularities is shown
by the reply of a bright little girl when
asked to give the principal parts of some
irregular verbs. Several were given cor
rectly, and then she began on another:
"Eat-ate'-she paused for a moment in
thought, and then added, swallowed. -
Speech and Speech Reading for the Deaf"
by John Dutton Wright, in the January
Century.