St. Landry clarion. (Opelousas, La.) 1890-1921, 1897-02-13
SPEECH FOR TIE TOTALLY DEAF.
1t IL Wonderful Achievement 10 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 les
son, and lltterance grows distinct. Bilt
the ear is the guide and critic OF these
early attempts. The deaf child, how
ever, hears no sound, and sees only the
slight movements of the lips and tongue,
and can never learn to speak by his own
unailed observation and imitation OF
those motions. The teacher must fur
nish the correction and training that
the ear ordinarily supplies. The teach
ing of speech to a 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 existence of such thing is that Of
touch, which simply gives him a lknoWl-
edge of the motions that accompany
sound, but are no more the sound itself
than the vibrations that produce heat
arc the sensation we call warmth.
To train the deaf ehild's organs to
take their proper positions for the ut
tcrance of words as unconsciously, as
those of a hearing person is a very slow
process. The development of any set
OF reflex actions is laborious task even
where mistakes can be recognized and
corrected by the learner himself; in this
case, however, the learner cannot cor
rect his own errors, but must rely upon
the alert ear of his teacher to keep him
from acquiring q wrong set of reflex
actions and forming habits that it will
BIC almost impossible to break up.
Side by side with articulation comes
! the task of teaching language. Imagine
| yourself in country whose speech you
| did not know, and whose inhabitants
did not understand yours. Imagine, III
addition, that you were suddenly de-
prived of your hearing. How well do
| you think you would succeed in learn
ing the new language? Yet the con-
| genitally deaf child is under even a
greater disadvantage than this. He is
rot only in a foreign land the language
OF which he does not understand, but.
| to begin with, he has no conception Of
what language is. He has no language
/ of his own which can be used as d, frame
work on which and by which to build
/ the new. If he is more than two years
old, he may have invented for himself
few natural, gestural signs to indi-
cate isolated objects or the simple needs
of his body, such as hungry, tired,
| thirsty: but these signs can no mors
be called a language than the different
movements of dogs tail and ears which
indicate his feelings or his wants can
be dignifed 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 occa-
! sionally finds a sentence like this, writ
| ten by a, boy in his journal after coming
to school one cold March morning:
/ THE wind is very blow, and am little
! shiser?" Or this substitution of act for
| implement: sThe man chopped the
| ground with his dig, and the dog hur-
| rahcd with his wag?" The irregulari-
/ ties and inconsistencies of English
grammar and spelling make it 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 fright
ened by these irregularities is shown
by the reply of a bright little girl when
asked tagive the principal parts Of some
irregular verbs. Several were given COR
rectly, and then she began on another:
"Eat-ate' paused for a moment
i'll thought, and then added, '.swa.-
lowed John Dutton Wright, in Gem
tury.