aplan4life

I'm sorry, there have been so many posts over the past couple of days
that I lost track of the OP. Anyway, there was a question posed about
unschooling and having some kids who had never spoken a word being
dropped off on an island and if left with books they wouldn't be able
to read them. You all gave some great responses but the following
threw me for a loop....

I think it was Ren who posted that they wouldn't be able to learn to
speak and a couple of more people agreed. This kind of shocked me
coming from ya'll radical homeschoolers! ROFL... Afterall, hey,
maybe they wouldn't call a tree a tree but who would we be to say
that "ugh-uh-buga" isn't speaking? KWIM?

Just food for thought.

~Sandy Winn (BTW...REN I miss you here in Pensacola)

[email protected]

----Original Message-----
From: aplan4life <aplan4life@...>

I think it was Ren who posted that they wouldn't be able to learn to
speak and a couple of more people agreed. This kind of shocked me
coming from ya'll radical homeschoolers! ROFL... Afterall, hey,
maybe they wouldn't call a tree a tree but who would we be to say
that "ugh-uh-buga" isn't speaking? KWIM?

--==-

Yes, you are right. Language of some sort would evolve---especially if there were more than just one child dropped off.

But it would be *highly* unlikely <g> that the language spoken would be English!


~Kelly

Kelly Lovejoy
Conference Coordinator
Live and Learn Unschooling Conference
http://liveandlearnconference.org


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

aplan4life

Goodness, forgot to say my whole point was that being that it is a
natural desire for humans to learn, I am sure that they would come up
with ways to communicate, be it a sound for a specific thing or type
of movement, perhaps drawing. For instance: "bwogha" may sound like a
silly noise to us, but to humans left alone on an island, never having
been around another language before, in their language "bwogha" might
be what they come up with and others learn as passed down to mean
water. They wouldn't learn our language but they certainly would
naturally come up with one of their own.

~Sandy Winn
>

elainegh8

Hi
on a serious note children who have not heard human speech by a
certain age fail to develop it. There have been quite a few published
studies of children who have been neglected or abandoned and had no or
extremely limited human contact, they don't learn to speak.

However it appears there have not been any cases of several children
being abandoned together so no one knows for sure if they would
develop their own rudimentary language or not.

It's worth pointing out that these children could not be 'taught' how
to speak either.

So it's entirely different to unschooling and late readers etc as they
are exposed to text and written language all the time. It's the
exposure that counts not the teaching.

BWs Elaine

> I think it was Ren who posted that they wouldn't be able to learn to
> speak and a couple of more people agreed. This kind of shocked me
> coming from ya'll radical homeschoolers! ROFL... Afterall, hey,
> maybe they wouldn't call a tree a tree but who would we be to say
> that "ugh-uh-buga" isn't speaking? KWIM?
>
> Just food for thought.
>
> ~Sandy Winn (BTW...REN I miss you here in Pensacola)
>

aplan4life

> Hi
> on a serious note children who have not heard human speech by a
> certain age fail to develop it. There have been quite a few
published
> studies of children who have been neglected or abandoned and had no
or
> extremely limited human contact, they don't learn to speak.

For how long though was the child studied, a lifetime? I mean, speech
at one time or another started somewhere. Even if it is a sound, to
one who has never heard language before, even if it took 50 years to
come up with a particular sound for a tree, wouldn't that technically
be speech to the one making it?

I have no clue what the hell I am talking about so please feel free to
help me understand. :-)

Respectfully
Sandra Winn

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/12/05 1:04:27 PM, aplan4life@... writes:


> but to humans left alone on an island,
>

HumanS!?
I thought the example was one human.

A group of raw humans (from infancy, some theoretical batch of
abandoned-on-safe-island-infants) would eventually learn to read too, wouldn't they?
Otherwise, how did so many different writing systems evolve on earth? <g>

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

aplan4life

> HumanS!?
> I thought the example was one human.

Maybe I'm wrong but I thought the the woman questioning said to effect
of "If you dropped off children on a deserted island...." I just
could not find the OP. She was asking regarding reading though and in
which case, like you point out so smartly...if it were more than one
they would come up with a written language on their own.

~Sandy Winn

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/12/05 1:47:23 PM, aplan4life@... writes:


>    -=- on a serious note children who have not heard human speech by a
> > certain age fail to develop it. -=-
>
Are you talking about deafness?



> -=-There have been quite a few
> published studies of children who have been neglected or abandoned and had
> no
> or extremely limited human contact, they don't learn to speak.
>
Are you talking about feral children? Wolf-children?
There were two girls in India, early 20th century(?), but they didn't live
long enough to say "never" about their speech development, I don't think.

I don't think there have been enough children who could hear but were
abandoned where NO language was heard to study their speech, have there been?

Please bring some references to support your statement. Thanks.

Sandra




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/12/05 1:56:29 PM, aplan4life@... writes:


> She was asking regarding reading though and in
> which case, like you point out so smartly...if it were more than one
> they would come up with a written language on their own. 
>

I dont' think they would, but their descendents would, eventually. But how
big is this island? They might need to learn to build boats and find some
more land with something to make paper or vellum out of, or have clay to make
tablets like the Babylonians did. Maybe if they'll find slate and write on
rocks there.

But the truth is that on this planet with real people, language sprang up all
over the place, and all sorts of written representations of languages. Not
every language is written, but lots are.

(Disclaimer for those who prefer to believe God gave language to Adam and Eve
and then created other languages just to confuse everyone as punishment for
people having tried to build a tower to heaven: Feel free to ignore me lest
lightning strike you. That Eden-crashing, flood-making, language-confusing
God is a smitin' son of a gun.)

Sandra


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Angela

Was the movie "Nell" based on a true story? I can't remember the details
really, but it came to mind with this conversation.

Angela
game-enthusiast@...

aplan4life

> I dont' think they would, but their descendents would,
eventually. But how
> big is this island? They might need to learn to build boats and
find some
> more land with something to make paper or vellum out of, or have
clay to make
> tablets like the Babylonians did. Maybe if they'll find slate
and write on
> rocks there.
>
> But the truth is that on this planet with real people, language
sprang up all
> over the place, and all sorts of written representations of
languages. Not
> every language is written, but lots are.


You are right and now that memory has come back I believe that Ren
was referring to "speech" and you are right, that is much different
than "language"

(Disclaimer for those who prefer to believe God gave language to
Adam and Eve
> and then created other languages just to confuse everyone as
punishment for
> people having tried to build a tower to heaven: Feel free to
ignore me lest
> lightning strike you. That Eden-crashing, flood-making, language-
confusing
> God is a smitin' son of a gun.)
>

ROFLMAO!!!

Su Penn

When my partner was studying linguistics, children who were abandoned
in the wild or confined without regular human contact were regularly
discussed for what they reveal about language acquisition. Children who
do not have human contact don't acquire language and usually can't once
they're discovered. A girl named Genie was the most recent
highly-publicized case I'm aware of; she was confined by her family
with almost no human contact until she was 13. The details are
harrowing so I won't say more. But here is a link to some information
about language acquisition in feral children for interested folks:
http://www.feralchildren.com/en/language.php

Su

On Nov 12, 2005, at 3:55 PM, SandraDodd@... wrote:

> > -=-There have been quite a few
> > published studies of children who have been neglected or abandoned
> and had
> > no
> > or extremely limited human contact, they don't learn to speak.
> >
> Are you talking about feral children?   Wolf-children?
> There were two girls in India, early 20th century(?), but they didn't
> live
> long enough to say "never" about their speech development, I don't
> think.
>
> I don't think there have been enough children who could hear but were
> abandoned where NO language was heard to study their speech, have
> there been?

[email protected]

In a message dated 11/12/2005 7:52:32 PM Central Standard Time,
pennsu@... writes:

Children who
do not have human contact don't acquire language and usually can't once
they're discovered. A girl named Genie


~~~

I just read that story on the site Sandra posted, and she did acquire speech.

That site is really fascinating.

Karen


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]