GESTURE-LANGUAGE AND WORD-LANGUAGE. 73 



there was not one who had not uttered at least a few spoken 

 names, which he had discovered himself, and some were very- 

 clear and well defined. I had under my instruction a born 

 deaf-mute, nineteen years old, who had previously invented 

 many wi'iteable words for things, some three, four, and six 

 syllables long.^-* For instance, he called to eat "mumm,^' to 

 drink " schipp," a child " tutten," a dog " beyer," money 

 " patten." He had a neighbour who was a grocer, and him he 

 called " patt" [a name, no doubt, connected with his name for 

 money, for buying and selling is indicated by the deaf and 

 dumb by the action of counting out coin]. The grocer's son 

 he called by a simple combination " pattutten." For the two 

 first numerals, he had words — 1, " ga;" 2, "schuppatter." In 

 his language, " riecke" meant " I will not ;" and when they 

 wanted to force him to do anything, he would cry " naflfet riecke 

 schito." An exclamation which he used was "heschbefa," in 

 the sense of God forbid.^ 



Some of these sounds, as "mumm" and "schipp," for eat- 

 ing and drinking, and perhaps " beyer," for the dog, are mere 

 vocalizations of the movements of the mouth, which the deaf- 

 and-dumb make in imitating the actions of eating, di^inking, 

 and barking, in their gesture-language. Besides, it is a com- 

 mon thing for even the untaught deaf-and-dumb to speak and 

 understand a few words of the language spoken by their asso- 

 ciates. Though they cannot hear them, they imitate the mo- 

 tions of the lips and teeth of those who speak, and thus make 

 a tolerable imitation of words containing labial and dental let- 

 ters, though the gutturals, being made quite out of sight, can 

 only be imparted to them by proper teaching, and then only 

 with difficulty and imperfectly. It is scarcely necessary to say 

 that when the deaf-and-dumb are taught to speak in articulate 

 language, this is done merely by developing and systematizing 

 the lip-imitation which is natural to them. As instances of the 

 power which deaf-mutes have of learning words by sight with- 

 out any regular teaching, may be given the cases mentioned 

 by Schmalz of children born stone-deaf, who learnt in this 

 way to say " papa," " mamma," " muhme" (cousin), " puppe" 



1 Heinicke, p. 137, etc. 



