It would not do, however, for the child’s ‘little language’ and its dreadful mistakes to become fixed. This might easily happen, if the child were never out of the narrow circle of its own family, which knows and recognizes its ‘little language.’ But this is stopped because it comes more and more into contact with others—uncles and aunts, and especially little cousins and playmates: more and more often it happens that the mutilated words are not understood, and are corrected and made fun of, and the child is incited in this way to steady improvement: the ‘little language’ gradually gives place to the ‘common language,’ as the child becomes a member of a social group larger than that of his own little home.
We have now probably found the chief reasons why a child learns his mother-tongue better than even a grown-up person who has been for a long time in a foreign country learns the language of his environment. But it is also a contributory reason that the child’s linguistic needs, to begin with, are far more limited than those of the man who wishes to be able to talk about anything, or at any rate about something. Much more is also linguistically required of the latter, and he must have recourse to language to get all his needs satisfied, while the baby is well looked after even if it says nothing but wawawawa. So the baby has longer time to store up his impressions and continue his experiments, until by trying again and again he at length gets his lesson learnt in all its tiny details, while the man in the foreign country, who must make himself understood, as a rule goes on trying only till he has acquired a form of speech which he finds natives understand: at this point he will generally stop, at any rate as far as pronunciation and the construction of sentences are concerned (while his vocabulary may be largely increased). But this ‘just recognizable’ language is incorrect in thousands of small details, and, inasmuch as bad little habits quickly become fixed, the kind of language is produced which we know so well in the case of resident foreigners—who need hardly open their lips before everyone knows they are not natives, and before a practised ear can detect the country they hail from.[24]
VIII.—§ 2. Natural Ability and Sex.
An important factor in the acquisition of language which we have not considered is naturally the individuality of the child. Parents are apt to draw conclusions as to the abilities of their young hopeful from the rapidity with which he learns to talk; but those who are in despair because their Tommy cannot say a single word when their neighbours’ Harry can say a great deal may take comfort. Slowness in talking may of course mean deficiency of ability, or even idiocy, but not necessarily. A child who chatters early may remain a chatterer all his life, and children whose motto is ‘Slow and sure’ may turn out the deepest, most independent and most trustworthy characters in the end. There are some children who cannot be made to say a single word for a long time, and then suddenly come out with a whole sentence, which shows how much has been quietly fructifying in their brain. Carlyle was one of these: after eleven months of taciturnity he heard a child cry, and astonished all by saying, “What ails wee Jock?” Edmund Gosse has a similar story of his own childhood, and other examples have been recorded elsewhere (Meringer, 194; Stern, 257).
The linguistic development of an individual child is not always in a steady rising line, but in a series of waves. A child who seems to have a boundless power of acquiring language suddenly stands still or even goes back for a short time. The cause may be sickness, cutting teeth, learning to walk, or often a removal to new surroundings or an open-air life in summer. Under such circumstances even the word ‘I’ may be lost for a time.
Some children develop very rapidly for some years until they have reached a certain point, where they stop altogether, while others retain the power to develop steadily to a much later age. It is the same with some races: negro children in American schools may, while they are little, be up to the standard of their white schoolfellows, whom they cannot cope with in later life.
The two sexes differ very greatly in regard to speech—as in regard to most other things. Little girls, on the average, learn to talk earlier and more quickly than boys; they outstrip them in talking correctly; their pronunciation is not spoilt by the many bad habits and awkwardnesses so often found in boys. It has been proved by statistics in many countries that there are far more stammerers and bad speakers among boys and men than among girls and women. The general receptivity of women, their great power of, and pleasure in, imitation, their histrionic talent, if one may so say—all this is a help to them at an early age, so that they can get into other people’s way of talking with greater agility than boys of the same age.
Everything that is conventional in language, everything in which the only thing of importance is to be in agreement with those around you, is the girls’ strong point. Boys may often show a certain reluctance to do exactly as others do: the peculiarities of their ‘little language’ are retained by them longer than by girls, and they will sometimes steadily refuse to correct their own abnormalities, which is very seldom the case with girls. Gaucherie and originality thus are two points between which the speech of boys is constantly oscillating. Cf. below, Ch. [XIII.]