CHAPTER IV.
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SPEECH The two persons who have written authoritatively about Miss Kellers speed the way she lear are Miss Sarah Fuller, of the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston, Massachusetts, who gave her the first lessons, and Miss Sullivan, who, by her uing discipline, carried on the success of these first lessons.Before I quote from Miss Sullivans at, let me try to give some impression of what Miss Kellers speed voice qualities are at present.
Her voice is loleasant to listen to. Her speech lacks variety and modulation; it runs in a sing-song when she is reading aloud; and when she speaks with fair degree of loudness, it hovers about two or three middle tones. Her voice has an aspirate quality; there seems always to be too much breath for the amount of tone. Some of her notes are musical and charming. When she is telling a childs story, or oh pathos in it, her voice runs into pretty slurs from ooo ahis is like the effect of the slow dwelling on long words, not quite well mahat oices in a child who is telling a solemn story.
The principal thing that is lag is sentence at and variety in the iion of phrases. Miss Keller pronounces each word as a fner does when he is still lab with the elements of a sentence, or as children sometimes read in school when they have to pick out each word.
She speaks Frend German. Her friend, Mr. John Hitz, whose native tongue is German, says that her pronunciation is excellent. Another friend, who is as familiar with French as with English, finds her French much more intelligible than her English. When she speaks English she distributes her emphasis as in Frend so does not put suffit stress on ated syllables. She says for example, "pro-vo-ca-tion,”
"in-di-vi-du-al," with ever so little differeween the value of syllables, and a good deal of insisten the pronunciation of the same word one day and the . It would, I think, be hard to make her feel just how to pronounce DIARY without her erriher toward DIAYRY or DIRY, and, of course the word is her one nor the other. For no system of marks in a lexi tell one how to pronounce a word. The only way is to hear it, especially in a language like English which is so full of unspellable, suppressed vowels and quasi-vowels.
Miss Kellers vowels are not firm. Her AWFUL is nearly AWFIL. The wavering is caused by the absence of at on FUL, for she pronounces FULL correctly.
She sometimes mispronounces as she reads aloud and es on a word which she happens o have uttered, though she may have written it many times. This difficulty and some others may be corrected when she and Miss Sullivan have more time. Since 1894, they have been so mu their books that they have ed everything that was not necessary to the immediate task of passing the school years successfully.
Miss Keller will never be able, I believe, to speak loud without destroying the pleasant quality and the distiness of her words, but she do muake her speech clearer.
When she was at the Wright-Humason School in New York, Dr. Humason tried to improve her voiot only her word pronunciation, but the voice itself, and gave her lessons in tone and vocal exercises.
It is hard to say whether or not Miss Kellers speech is easy to uand. Some uand her readily; others do not. Her friends grow aced to her speed fet that it is different from that of any one else. Children seldom have any difficulty in uanding her; which suggests that her deliberate measured speech is like theirs, before they e to the adult trick of running all the words of a phrase into one movement of the breath. I am told that Miss Keller speaks better than most other deaf people.
Miss Keller has told how she learo speak. Miss Sullivans at in her address at Chautauqua, in July, 1894, at the meeting of The Ameri Association to Promote the Teag of Speech to the Deaf, is substantially like Miss Kellers in points of fact.
MISS SULLIVANS AT OF MISS KELLERS SPEECH It was three years from the time when Helen began to unicate by means of the manual alphabet that she received her first lesson in the more natural and universal medium of human intercourse--oral language. She had bee very profit in the use of the manual alphabet, which was her only means of unication with the outside world; through it she had acquired a vocabulary whiabled her to verse freely, read intelligently, and write with parative ease and correess. heless, the impulse to utter audible sounds was strong within her, and the stant efforts which I made to repress this instinctive tendency, which I feared in time would bee unpleasant, were of no avail. I made no effort to teach her to speak<bdi></bdi>, because I regarded her inability to watch the lips of others as an insurmountable obstacle. But she gradually became scious that her way of unig was different from that used by those around her, and one day her thoughts found expression. "How do the blind girls know what to say with their mouths? Why do you not teach me to talk like them? Do deaf children ever learn to speak?" I explaio her that some deaf childreaught to speak, but that they could see their teachers mouths, and that that was a very great assistao them. But she interrupted me to say she was very sure she could feel my mouth very well. Soon after this versation, a lady came to see her and told her about the deaf and blind Nian child, Ragnhild Kaata, who had been taught to speak and uand what her teacher said to her by toug his lips with her fingers. She at once resolved to learn to speak, and from that day to this she has never wavered in that resolution. She began immediately to make sounds which she called speaking, and I saw the y of correstru, since her heart was set upon learning to talk; and, feeling my own inpeteo teach her, never having given the subject of articulation serious study, I went with my pupil for advid assistao Miss Sarah Fuller. Miss Fuller was delighted with Helens earness ahusiasm, and at once began to teach her. In a few lessons she learned nearly all of the English sounds, and ihan a month she was able to articulate a great many words distinctly. From the first she was not tent to be drilled in single sounds, but was impatient to pronounce words aehe length of the word or the difficulty of the arra of the elements never seemed to disce her. But, with all her eagerness and intelligence, learning to speak taxed her powers to the utmost. But there was satisfa in seeing from day to day the evidence of growing mastery and the possibility of final success. And Helens success has been more plete and inspiring than any of her friends expected, and the childs delight in being able to utter her thoughts in living and distinct speech is shared by all who witness her pleasure when straell her that they uand her.
I have been asked a great many times whether I think Helen will ever speak naturally; that is, as other people speak. I am hardly prepared to decide that question, or even give an opiniarding it. I believe that I have hardly beguo know what is possible. Teachers of the deaf often express surprise that Helens speech is so good when she has not received any regular instru in speech sihe first few lessons given her by Miss Fuller. I only say in reply, "This is due to habitual imita<var></var>tion and practice! practice! practice!" Nature has determined how the child shall learn to speak, and all we do is to aid him in the simplest, easiest ossible, by encing him to observe and imitate the vibrations in the voice.
Some further details appear in an earlier, more detailed at, which Miss Sullivan wrote for the Perkins Institutio of 1891.
I khat Laura Bridgman had shown the same intuitive desire to produce sounds, and had even learo pronounce a few simple words, which she took great delight in using, and I did not doubt that Helen could aplish as much as this. I thought, however, that the advantage she would derive would not repay her for the time and labour that su experiment would cost.
Moreover, the absence of hearing rehe voice monotonous and often very disagreeable; and such speech is generally unintelligible except to those familiar with the speaker.
The acquiring of speech by untaught deaf children is always slow and often painful. Too much stress, it seems to me, is often laid upon the importance of teag a deaf child to articulate--a process which may be detrimental to the pupils intellectual development. In the very nature of things, articulation is an unsatisfaeans of education; while the use of the manual alphabet quis and invigorates mental activity, sihrough it the deaf child is brought into close tact with the English language, and the highest and most abstract ideas may be veyed to the mind readily and accurately. Helens case proved it to be also an invaluable aid in acquiring articulation. She was already perfectly familiar with words and the stru of sentences, and had only meical difficulties to overe. Moreover, she knew what a pleasure speech would be to her, and this definite knowledge of what she was striving fave her the delight of anticipation which made drudgery easy. The untaught deaf child who is made to articulate does not know what the goal is, and his lessons in speech are for a long time tedious and meaningless.
Before describing the process of teag Helen to speak, it may be well to state briefly to what extent she had used the vocal ans before she began to receive regular instru in articulation. When she was stri down with the illness which resulted in her loss of sight and hearing, at the age of een months, she was learning to talk. The unmeaning babblings of the infant were being day by day scious and voluntary signs of what she felt and thought. But the disease checked her progress in the acquisition of oral language, and, when her physical strength returned, it was found that she <cite>藏书网</cite>had ceased to speak intelligibly because she could no longer hear a sound. She tio exercise her vocal ans meically, as ordinary children do. Her cries and laughter and the tones of her voice as she pronounced many word elements were perfectly natural, but the child evidently attached no significe to them, and with one exception they were produot with any iion of unig with those around her, but from the sheer y of exerg her innate, anid hereditary faculty of expression. She always attached a meaning to the word water, which was one of the first sounds her baby lips learo form, and it was the only word which she tio articulate after she lost her hearing. Her pronunciation of this gradually became indistinct, and when I first knew her it was nothing more than a peculiar noise. heless, it was the only sign she ever made for water, and not until she had learo spell the word with her fingers did she fet the spoken symbol. The word water, and the gesture which corresponds to the wood-by,seem to have been all that the child remembered of the natural and acquired signs with which she had been familiar before her illness.
As she became acquainted with her surroundings through the sense of feeling (I use the word in the broadest sense, as including all tactile impressions), she felt more and more the pressing y of unig with those around her. Her little hands felt every objed observed every movement of the persons about her, and she was quiitate these movements. She was thus able to express her more imperative needs and many of her thoughts.
At the time when I became her teacher, she had made for herself upward of sixty signs, all of which were imitative and were readily uood by those who knew her. The only signs which I think she may have ied were her signs for SMALL and LARGE. Whenever she wished for anything very much she would gesticulate in a very expressive manner. Failing to make herself uood, she would bee violent. In the years of her mental impriso she depended entirely upon signs, and she did not work out for herself any sort of articulate language capable of expressing ideas. It seems, however, that, while she was still suffering from severe pain, she noticed the movements of her mothers lips.
When she was not occupied, she wandered restlessly about the house, making strahough rarely unpleasant sounds. I have seen her rock her doll, making a tinuous, monotonous sound, keeping one hand ohroat, while the fingers of the other hand he movements of her lips. This was in imitation of her mothers ing to the baby. Occasionally she broke out into a merry laugh, and then she would reach out and touch the mouth of any one who happeo be near her, to see if he were laughing also. If she detected
no smile, she gesticulated excitedly, trying to vey her thought; but if she failed to make her panion laugh, she sat still for a few moments, with a troubled and disappointed expression. She leased with anything which made a noise. She liked to feel the cat purr; and if by ce she felt a dog i of barking, she showed great pleasure. She always liked to stand by the piano when some one laying and singing. She kept one hand on the singers mouth, while the other rested on the piano, and she stood in this position as long as any one would sing to her, and afterward she would make a tinuous sound which she called singing. The only words she had learo pronouh any degree of distiness previous to March, 1890, were PAPA, MAMMA, BABY, SISTER. These words she had caught without instru from the lips of friends. It will be seen that they tain three vowel and six sonant elements, and these formed the foundation for her first real lesson in speaking.
At the end of the first lesson she was able to pronounce distinctly the following sounds: a, a", a^, e, i, o, c soft like s and hard like k, g hard, b, l, n, m, t, p, s, u, k, f and d. Hard sonants were, and iill are, very difficult for her to pronoun e with one another in the same word; she often suppresses the one and ges the other, and sometimes she replaces both by an analogous sound with soft aspiration. The fusioween l and r was very noticeable in her speech at first. She would repeatedly use one for the other. The great difficulty in the pronunciation of the r made it one of the last elements which she mastered.
The ch, sh and soft g also gave her much trouble, and she does not yet enunciate them clearly. [The difficulties which Miss Sullivan found in 1891 are, in a measure, the difficulties which show in Miss Kellers speech today.] When she had been talking for less than a week, she met her friend, Mr. Rodoachi, and immediately began tle with the pronunciation of his name; nor would she give it up until she was able to articulate the word distinctly. Her i never diminished for a moment; and, in her eagero overe the difficulties which beset her on all sides, she taxed her powers to the utmost, and learned in eleven lessons all of the separate elements of speech.
Enough appears in the ats by Miss Kellers teacher to show the process by which she reads the lips with her fingers, the process by which she was taught to speak, and by which, of course, she listen to versation now. In reading the lips she is not so quick or so accurate as some reports declare. It is a clumsy and unsatisfactory way of receiving unication, useless when Miss Sullivan or some one else who knows the manual alphabet is present to give Miss Keller the spoken words of others. Indeed, when some friend is trying to speak to Miss Keller, and the attempt is not proving successful, Miss Sullivan usually helps by spelling the lost words into Miss Kellers hand.
President Roosevelt had little difficulty last spring in making Miss Keller uand him, and especially requested Miss Sullivan not to spell into her hand. She got every word, for the Presidents speech is notably distinct. Other people say they have no success in making Miss Keller "hear" them.
A few friends to whom she is aced, like Mrs. A. C. Pratt, and Mr. J. E. Chamberlin, pass a whole day with her and tell her everything without the manual alphabet. The ability to read the lips helps Miss Keller iing corres of her pronunciation from Miss Sullivan and others, just as it was the means of her learning to speak at all, but it is rather an aplishment than a y.
It must be remembered that speech tributed in no way to her fual education, though without the ability to speak she could hardly have goo higher schools and to college. But she knows better than any one else what value speech has had for her. The following is her address at the fifth meeting of the Ameri Association to Promote the Teag of Speech to the Deaf, at Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, July 8, 1896: ADDRESS OF HELEN KELLER AT MT. AIRY If you knew all the joy I feel in being able to speak to you to-day, I think you would have some idea of the value of speech to the deaf, and you would uand why I want every little deaf child in all this great world to have an opportunity to learn to speak. I know that much has been said and written on this subject, and that there is a wide difference of opinion among teachers of the deaf in regard to oral instru. It seems very strao me that there should be this difference of opinion; I ot uand how any oerested in our education fail to appreciate the satisfa we feel in being able to express our thoughts in living words. Why, I use speech stantly, and I ot begin to tell you how much pleasure it gives me to do so.
Of course I know that it is not always easy for strao uand me, but it will be by and by; and in the meantime I have the unspeakable happiness of knowing that my family and friends rejoi my ability to speak. My little sister and baby brother love to have me tell them stories in the long summer evenings when I am at home; and my mother and teacher often ask me to read to them from my favourite books. I also discuss the political situation with my dear father, and we decide the most perplexing questions quite as satisfactorily to ourselves as if I could see and hear. So you see what a blessing speech is to me. It brings me into closer and tenderer relationship with those I love, and makes it possible for me to enjoy the sweet panionship of a great many persons from whom I should be entirely bbr></abbr>cut off if I could not talk.
I remember the time before I learo speak, and how I used tle to express my thoughts by means of the manual alphabet--how my thoughts used to beat against my fiips like little birds striving to gain their freedom, until one day Miss Fuller opened wide the prison-door ahem escape. I wonder if she remembers how eagerly and gladly they spread their wings and flew away. Of course, it was not easy at first to fly. The speech-wings were weak and broken, and had lost all the grad beauty that had once been theirs; indeed, nothing was left save the impulse to fly, but that was something. One ever sent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar. But, he></a>less, it seemed to me sometimes that I could never use my speech-wings as God intended I should use them; there were so many difficulties in the way, so many discements; but I kept , knowing that patiend perseverance would win in the end. And while I worked, I built the most beautiful air-castles, and dreamed dreams, the pleasa of which was of the time when I should talk like other people, and the thought of the pleasure it would give my mother to hear my voice more, sweetened every effort and made every failure an iive to try harder ime. So I want to say to those who are trying to learn to speak and those who are teag them: Be of good cheer. Do not think of to-days failures, but of the success that may e to-morrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overing obstacles--a delight in climbing rugged paths, which you would perhaps never know if you did not sometime slip backward--if the road was always smooth and pleasant. Remember, no effort that we make to attain somethiiful is ever lost. Sometime, somewhere, somehow we shall find that which we seek. We shall speak, yes, and sing, too, as God intended we should speak and sing.
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