At five months the child began to use a kind of language, consisting of six words, to indicate a desire or intention. Ning signified desire for milk, and was employed for that up to the age of two years. (The word may possibly have been derived from the word milk,[E] frequently heard.) At nine months the child made use of the words pretty things for animals; at ten months it formed many small sentences.
The child practiced itself in speaking, even without direct imitation of words just spoken, for at the age of two years it began to say over a number of nursery rhymes that nobody in the house knew, and that could not have been learned from other children, because the child had no intercourse with such. At a later period the child declared that the rhymes had been learned from a former nurse, whom it had not seen for nearly three months. Thus the articulation was perfecting itself for weeks before it was understood. The exercises of the child sounded like careless reading aloud.
The book of Prof. Ludwig Strümpell, of Leipsic, "Psychologische Pädagogik" (Leipsic, 1880, 368 pages), contains an appendix, "Notizen über die geistige Entwickelung eines weiblichen Kindes während der ersten zwei Lebensjahre" ("Notes on the Mental Development of a Female Child during the First Two Years of Life"); in this are many observations that relate to the learning of speech. These are from the years 1846 and 1847.
In the tenth week, ah! ah! was an utterance of joy; in the thirteenth, the child sings, all alone; in the nineteenth comes the guttural utterance, grrr, but no consonant is assigned to this period. In the first half-year are heard distinctly, in the order given, ei, aga, eigei, ja, ede, dede, eds, edss, emme, meme, nene, nein. In the eighth month, there is unmistakable understanding of what is said; e. g., "Where is the tick-tack?" In the ninth, am, amme, ap, pap, are said; she sings vowels that are sung for her. In the eleventh month, imitation of sounds is frequent, kiss, kiss; at sight of the tea-kettle, ssi, ssi; she knows all the people in the house; calls the birds by the strange name tibu. Echolalia. In the fourteenth month, needles are called tick (stich = prick or stitch). To the question, "Where is Emmy?" the child points, correctly, to herself; says distinctly, Kopf (head), Buch (book), roth (red), Tante (aunt), gut (good), Mann (man), Baum (tree); calls the eye (Auge) ok, Pruscinsky prrti, the dog uf, uf. In the seventeenth month, simple sentences are spoken; she speaks to herself. In the nineteenth month, she calls herself by her name, and counts twei, drei, ümpf, exe, ibene, atte, neune (zwei, drei, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun—2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9); in the twenty-second month, she talks a good deal to herself, and makes very rapid progress in the correct use of words and the formation of sentences.
From the diary kept by Frau von Strümpell concerning this daughter and a sister of this one, and kindly placed at my disposal in the original, I take the following notes: In the eighth month, mamma, in the tenth, papa, without meaning. In the eleventh month, the child's understanding of what is said to her is surprising, and so is her imitation. To "Guten Tag" (good-day) she responds, tata; to "Adieu," adaa. A book, which the child likes to turn the leaves of, she calls ade (for a b c). The first certain association of a sound learned with a concept seems to be that of the ee, which has often been said to her, with wet, or with what is forbidden. Amme am om, "Amme komm" (nurse come) (both imitative), is most frequently repeated, papa seldom. The r guttural, or rattled, is imperfectly imitated. In the thirteenth month, the little girl says, tippa tappa, when she wants to be carried, and responds te te to "steh! steh" (stop)! She now calls the book a-be-te (for a b c). Pigeons she calls kurru; men, in the picture-book, mann mann. When some one asked, "Where is the brush?" the child made the motion of brushing. To the questions, "Where is your ear, your tooth, nose, hand, your fingers, mamma's ear, papa's nose?" etc., she points correctly to the object. On her mother's coming into the room, mamam; her father's, papap. When the nurse is gone, amme om, amme am. The mother asked some one, "Do you hear?" and the child looked at her and took hold of her own ears. To the question, "How do we eat?" she makes the motion of eating. She says nein when she means to refuse. "Dank" (thank) is pronounced dakkn. "Bitte" (I beg, or please) is correctly pronounced. She understands the meaning of spoon, dress, mirror, mouth, plate, drink, and many other words, and likes to hear stories, especially when they contain the words already known to her. In the fifteenth month "Mathilde" is given by her as tilda and tida. At sight of a faded bouquet she said blom (for Blume, flower). She says everything that is said to her, though imperfectly; produces the most varied articulate sounds; says ta, papa, ta when she hands anything to a person; calls the foot (Fuss) pss, lisping and thrusting out the tongue. She often says omama and opapa. In the seventeenth month, Ring is called ning, Wagen (carriage), uagen, Sophie, dsofi, Olga, olla krank (ill), kank, Pflaume (plum), pluma, satt (satisfied, as to hunger), datt, Hände-waschen (washing the hands), ander-uaschen, Schuh and Tuch (shoe and cloth), tu, Strumpf (stocking), tumpf, Hut (hat), ut, Suppe (soup), duppe. Mama kum bild dat bank, is for "Mama komm, ich habe das Bilderbuch, erzähle mir dazu etwas, dort setz' Dich zu mir" (M., come, I have the picture-book; tell me something in it; sit there by me). In the eighteenth month, "Where is Omama?" is answered with im garten; "How are Omama and Opapa?" with sund (for gesund, well); "What is Omama doing?" with näht (she is sewing). The black Apollo is called pollo wurz (schwarz, black).
The sister of this child, in the tenth month, applied the word mama to her mother, pap pap and papap to her father, but was less sure in this; tjē-tē were favorite syllables. When asked, "Where is Tick-tack?" she looks at the clock on the wall. A piercing scream is an utterance of joy. In the fifteenth month, Apapa is her word for grandfather, and is roguishly used for grandmother. She says aben for "haben" (have), tatta for "Tante" (aunt), apa (for uppa) means "I want to go up." Her imitation of what is said is very imperfect, but her understanding of it is surprising. In the nineteenth month she makes much use of her hands in gesture instead of speaking. Kuker is her word for "Zucker" (sugar), bildebu for "Bilderbuch" (picture-book). But she habitually calls a book omama or opapa (from the letters of her grandparents). Clara is pronounced clala, Christine, titine. In the twentieth month, her mother, after telling her a story, asked, "Who, pray, is this, I?" and the child replied, "Mamma" "And who is that, you?" "Bertha, Bertha" (the child's name) was the answer. At this period she said, Bertha will; also paren (for fahren, drive), pallen (fallen, fall), bot, (Brot, bread), atig (artig, good, well-behaved), mal (noch einmal, once more), muna (Mund, mouth), aujen (Augen, eyes), ol (Ohr, ear), tirn (Stirn, forehead), wanne (Wange, cheek, and Wanne, bath-tub), aua (August), dute (gute) mama, päsche (Equipage), wasar tinken (Wasser trinken, drink water) dabel (Gabel, fork), lüssel (Schlüssel, key), is nits (ist nichts, is nothing), mula (Milch, milk), ass (heiss, hot).
Another remarkable observation is the following from the fifteenth month. It reminds one of the behavior of hypnotized adults. On her grandmother's birthday the child said some rhymes that she did not easily remember (there were six short verses, thirty-four words). One night soon after the birthday festival the little girl said off the verses, "almost for the first time without any stumbling, in her sleep."
From this we see how much more quickly in regard to articulation and independent use of words both these girls (the first of whom weighed only six pounds at birth) learned to speak than did Sigismund's boy, my own boy, and others.
Darwin observed (A Biographical Sketch of an Infant in "Mind, a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy," July, 1877, pp. 285-294) in a son of his, on the forty-seventh day of his life, a formation of sounds without meaning. The child took pleasure in it. The sounds soon became manifold. In the sixth month he uttered the sound da without any meaning; but in the fifth he probably began to try to imitate sounds. In the tenth month the imitation of sounds was unmistakable. In the twelfth he could readily imitate all sorts of actions, such as shaking his head and saying "Ah." He also understood intonations, gestures, several words, and short sentences. When exactly seven months old, the child associated his nurse with her name, so that when it was called out he would look round for her. In the thirteenth month the boy used gestures to explain his wishes; for instance, he picked up a bit of paper and gave it to his father, pointing to the fire, as he had often seen and liked to see paper burned. At exactly the age of a year he called food mum, which also signified "Give me food," and he used this word instead of beginning to cry as formerly. This word with affixes signified particular things to eat; thus shu-mum signified sugar, and a little later licorice was called black-shu-mum. When asking for food by the word mum he gave to it a very strongly marked tone of longing (Darwin says an "interrogatory sound," which should mean the same thing). It is remarkable that my child also, and in the tenth week for the first time, said mömm when he was hungry, and that a child observed by Fritz Schultze (Dresden) said mäm-mäm. Probably the syllable has its origin from the primitive syllable ma and from hearing the word "mamma" when placed at the breast of the mother.
Of the facts communicated by the physiologist Vierordt concerning the language of the child ("Deutsche Revue" of January, 1879, Berlin, pp. 29-46) should be mentioned this, that a babe in its second month expressed pleasure by the vowel a, the opposite feeling by ä. This is true of many other children also. In the third and fourth months the following syllables were recognizable: mam, ämma, fu, pfu, ess, äng, angka, acha, erra, hab. A lisping babe said, countless times, hab, hob, ha. These syllables coincide in part with those given by other observers. The pf and ss only have not been heard by me at this age, and I doubt whether f, for which teeth are needed, was produced with purity so early. In the second and third years a child pronounced the following words: beb (for bös, naughty); bebe (Besen, beesann, broom); webbe (Wasser, watja, water); wewe (Löwe, löwee, lion); ewebau (Elephant, elafant); webenau (Fledermaus, lebamaunz, bat); babaube (Blasebalg, ba-abats, bellows); ade (Hase, hare); emele (Schemel, footstool); gigod (Schildkröte, tortoise).