Rhythm and rime appeal strongly to the children’s minds. One English observer says that “a child in its third year will copy the rhythm of songs and verses it has heard in nonsense words.” The same thing is noted by Meringer (p. 116) and Stern (p. 103). Tony E. (2.10) suddenly made up the rime “My mover, I lov-er,” and Gordon M. (2.6) never tired of repeating a phrase of his own composition, “Custard over mustard.” A Danish girl of 3.1 is reported as having a “curious knack of twisting all words into rimes: bestemor hestemor prestemor, Gudrun sludrun pludrun, etc.”
VIII.—§ 5. Secret Languages.
Children, as we have seen, at first employ play-language for its own sake, with no arrière-pensée, but as they get older they may see that such language has the advantage of not being understood by their elders, and so they may develop a ‘secret language’ consciously. Some such languages are confined to one school, others may be in common use among children of a certain age all over a country. ‘M-gibberish’ and ‘S-gibberish’ consist in inserting m and s, as in goming mout tomdaym or gosings outs tosdays for ‘going out to-day’; ‘Marrowskying’ or ‘Hospital Greek’ transfers the initial letters of words, as renty of plain for ‘plenty of rain,’ flutterby for ‘butterfly’; ‘Ziph’ or ‘Hypernese’ (at Winchester) substitutes wa for the first of two initial consonants and inserts p or g, making ‘breeches’ into wareechepes and ‘penny’ into pegennepy. From my own boyhood in Denmark I remember two languages of this sort, in which a sentence like ‘du er et lille asen’ became dupu erper etpet lilpillepe apasenpen and durbe erbe erbe lirbelerbe arbeserbe respectively. Closely corresponding languages, with insertion of p and addition of -erbse, are found in Germany; in Holland we find ‘de schoone Mei’ made into depé schoopóonepé Meipéi, besides an -erwi-taal with a variation in which the ending is -erf. In France such a language is called javanais; ‘je vais bien’ is made into je-de-que vais-dai-qai bien-den-qen. In Savoy the cowherds put deg after each syllable and thus make ‘a-te kogneu se vaçhi’ (‘as-tu connu ce vacher?’ in the local dialect) into a-degá te-dege ko-dego gnu-degu sé-degé va-dega chi-degi? Nay, even among the Maoris of New Zealand there is a similar secret language, in which instead of ‘kei te, haere au ki reira’ is said te-kei te-i-te te-haere-te-re te-a te-u te-ki te-re-te-i-te-ra. Human nature is pretty much the same everywhere.[27]
VIII.—§ 6. Onomatopœia.
Do children really create new words? This question has been much discussed, but even those who are most skeptical in that respect incline to allow them this power in the case of words which imitate sounds. Nevertheless, it should be remembered that the majority of onomatopœic words heard from children are not their own invention, but are acquired by them in the same way as other words. Hence it is that such words have different forms in different languages. Thus to English cockadoodledoo corresponds French coquerico, German kikeriki and Danish kykeliky, to E. quack-quack, F. cancan, Dan. raprap, etc. These words are an imperfect representation of the birds’ natural cry, but from their likeness to it they are easier for the child to seize than an entirely arbitrary name such as duck.
But, side by side with these, children do invent forms of their own, though the latter generally disappear quickly in favour of the traditional forms. Thus Frans (2.3) had coined the word vakvak, which his mother had heard sometimes without understanding what he meant, when one day he pointed at some crows while repeating the same word; but when his mother told him that these birds were called krager, he took hold of this word with eagerness and repeated it several times, evidently recognizing it as a better name than his own. A little boy of 2.1 called soda-water ft, another boy said ging or gingging for a clock, also for the railway train, while his brother said dann for a bell or clock; a little girl (1.9) said pooh (whispered) for ‘match, cigar, pipe,’ and gagag for ‘hen,’ etc.
When once formed, such words may be transferred to other things, where the sound plays no longer any rôle. This may be illustrated through two extensions of the same word bŏom or bom, used by two children first to express the sound of something falling on the floor; then Ellen K. (1.9) used it for a ‘blow,’ and finally for anything disagreeable, e.g. soap in the eyes, while Kaare G. (1.8), after seeing a plate smashed, used the word for a broken plate and afterwards for anything broken, a hole in a dress, etc., also when a button had come off or when anything else was defective in any way.
VIII.—§ 7. Word-inventions.
Do children themselves create words—apart from onomatopœic words? To me there is no doubt that they do. Frans invented many words at his games that had no connexion, or very little connexion, with existing words. He was playing with a little twig when I suddenly heard him exclaim: “This is called lampetine,” but a little while afterwards he said lanketine, and then again lampetine, and then he said, varying the play, “Now it is kluatine and traniklualalilua” (3.6). A month later I write: “He is never at a loss for a self-invented word; for instance, when he has made a figure with his bricks which resembles nothing whatever, he will say, ‘That shall be lindam.’” When he played at trains in the garden, there were many stations with fanciful names, and at one time he and two cousins had a word kukukounen which they repeated constantly and thought great fun, but whose inner meaning I never succeeded in discovering. An English friend writes about his daughter: “When she was about two and a quarter she would often use some nonsense word in the middle of a perfectly intelligible sentence. When you asked her its meaning she would explain it by another equally unintelligible, and so on through a series as long as you cared to make it.” At 2.10 she pretended she had lost her bricks, and when you showed her that they were just by her, she insisted that they were not ‘bricks’ at all, but mums.