No part of the life of a child appeals to us more powerfully perhaps than the first use of our language. The small person's first efforts in linguistics win us by a certain graciousness, by the friendly impulse they disclose to get mentally near us, to enter into the full fruition of human intercourse. The difficulties, too, which we manage to lay upon the young learner of our tongue, and the way in which he grapples with these, lend a peculiar interest, half pathetic, half humorous, to this field of infantile activity. A child first begins to work in downright earnest when he tries to master these difficulties.

As we are here studying the child at an age when he has acquired a certain hold on human speech, I shall make no attempt to describe the babbling of the first months which precedes true speech. For the same reason I shall have to pass by the interesting beginnings of sign-making, and shall only just touch the first stages of articulate performance. All this is, I think, deeply interesting, but it cannot be adequately dealt with here, and I have fully dealt with it in my larger work.

The first difficulty which our little linguist has to encounter is the mechanical one of reproducing, with a recognisable measure of approximation, our verbal sounds. What a very rough approximation it is at first, all mothers know. When, for example, a child expects you to translate his sound "koppa" into "Tommy," or "pots" into "hippopotamus," it will be acknowledged that he is making heavy demands. Yet though he causes us difficulties in this way he does so because he finds himself in difficulties. His articulatory organ cannot master the terrible words we put in his way, and he is driven to these short cuts and other make-shifts.

The Namer of Things.

Leaving now the problem of getting over the mechanical difficulties of our speech, let us see what the little explorer has to do when trying to use verbal sounds with their right meanings. Here, too, we shall find that huge difficulties beset his path, and that his arrival at the goal proves him to have been in his way as valiant and hard-working as an African explorer.

One feature of the early tussle with our language is curious and often quaintly pretty. Having at first but few names, the little experimenter makes the most of these by extending them in new and surprising directions. The extension of names to new objects on the ground of some perceived likeness has been touched on above (p. 3); and many other examples might be given. Thus when one child first saw a star and wanted to name it he called it, as if by a poetic metaphor, an "eye". In like manner the name "pin" was extended by another child to a crumb just picked up, a fly, and a caterpillar, and seemed to mean something little to be taken between the fingers. The same child used the sound "'at" (hat) for anything put on the head, including a hair-brush. Similarly children often extend the names "Mamma, baby" to express any contrast of size, as when a small coin was called by an American child a "baby dollar".

In this extension of language by the child we find not merely a tendency to move along lines of analogy, as in the above instances, but to go from a thing to its accompaniments by way of what the psychologist calls association. This is illustrated by the case of Darwin's grandchild, who after learning to use the common children's name for duck, "quack," proceeded to call a sheet of water "quack". In like manner a little girl called the gas lamp "pop" from the sound produced when lighting it, and then carried over the name "pop" to the stool on which the maid stood when proceeding to light it.

There is another curious way in which children are driven by the slenderness of their verbal resources to "extend" the names they learn. They will often employ a word which indicates some relation to express what may be called the inverted relation. For example, like the unschooled yokel they will sometimes make the word "learn" do duty for "teach" also. In one case "spend" was made to express "cost". It was a somewhat similar inversion when a little girl called her parasol blown about by the wind "a windy parasol," and a stone that made her hand sore "a very sore stone".

Not only do the small experimenters thus stretch the application of their words beyond our conventional limitations, they are often daring enough when their stock fails them to invent new names. Sometimes this is done by framing a new composite name out of familiar ones. One child, for example, possessing the word steam-ship and wanting the name sailing-ship, cleverly hit upon the composite form "wind-ship". One little girl, when only a year and nine months old, showed quite a passion for classing objects by help of such compound names, arranging the rooms, for example, into "morner-room," "dinner-room" (she was fond of adding "er" at this time) and "nursery-room". Savages do much the same kind of thing, as when the Aztecs called a boat a "water-house".

It is no less bold a feat when the hard-pressed tyro in speechland frames a new word on the model of other words which he already knows. The results are often quaint enough. One small boy talked of the "rainer," the fairy who makes rain, and another little boy dubbed a teacher the "lessoner". Two children invented the quaint substantive "thinks" for "thoughts," and another child used the form "digs" for holes dug in the ground. Other droll inventions occur, as when one small person asked to see another worm "deading," and neatly expressed the act of undoing a parcel by the form "unparcel"; and when another child spoke of his metal toy being "unhotted," lacking our word cooled, and asked, "Can't I be sorried?" for "Can't I be forgiven?"

Just as children invent new general names, so they now and again invent "proper" names in order to mark off one person or thing from another of the same kind. Thus a German professor tells us that his grand-niece introduced her new nurse, who had the same name, "Mary," as her old one, as "Evening Mary," because she had arrived in the evening.

Of course children's experiments in language are not always so neat as this. They are sometimes misled by false analogies into the formation of such clumsy words as "sorrified" for "sorry," and "magnicious" for "magnificent".

The Sentence-builder.

It is an interesting moment when the young linguist tries his hand at putting words together in sentences. As is pretty well known, a child has for some time to try to make known his thoughts and wishes by single vocables, such as "mamma," "milk," "puss," "up," and so forth. Each of these words serves in the first baby language for a variety of sentences. Thus "Puss!" means sometimes "Puss is doing something," at other times "I want puss," and so forth. But somewhere about the age of one year nine months the child makes bold to essay a more explicit and definite form of statement.

The construction of sentences proceeds in a cautious manner. At first the structure is of the simplest, two words being placed one after the other, in what is called apposition, as in the couple, "Big bir" (big bird), "Papa no" (papa's nose), and the like.

Later on longer sentences are attempted of a similar pattern; and it is truly wonderful how much the child manages to express in this rude fashion without any aid from those valuable auxiliaries, prepositions, and the like. For example, one boy when in his twentieth month gave this elaborate order to his father, "Dada toe toe ba," that is, "Dada is to go and put his toes in the bath".

Quaint inversions of our order not infrequently occur in this early sentence-making. Thus one child used the form, "Out-pull-baby 'pecs," meaning in our language, "Baby pulls (or will pull) out the spectacles". Sometimes the order reminds us still more closely of the idiom of foreign languages, as when a little girl said: "How Babba (baby, i.e., herself) does feed nicely!"

Another curious feature of children's first style of composition is the fondness for antithesis. A little boy used when wishing to express his approval of something, say a dog, to use the form, "This a nice bow-wow, not nasty bow-bow". Similarly a little girl said, "Boo (the name of her cat) dot (got) tail; poor Babba (baby) dot no tail," proceeding to search for a tail under her skirts.

In the first attempts to fit our words together dreadful slips are apt to occur. The way in which children are wont to violate the rules of grammar when using verbs, as in saying "eated" for "ate," "scram" for "screamed," "be'd" for "was," and so on, is well known, and there are many excuses to be found for these very natural errors.

Particularly instructive are the odd confusions which children are apt to fall into when they come to use the pronouns, and more particularly "I," "me". Many a child begins by using "I" and "you" with mechanical imitation of others, meaning by "you" his own person, which is, of course, called "you" by others when addressing him. The forms "I," "me" and "my" are apt to be hopelessly mixed up, as in saying "me go" and "my go" for "I go," "me book" for "my book," and so forth. One little boy used the form "I am" for "I," saying, for example, "I am don't want to". A little German girl had an odd way of splitting up herself into two persons, saying, for example, "She has made me wet," meaning that she had made herself wet.

Throughout this work of mastering our language a child is wont to eke out his deficiencies by bold strokes of originality. When, for example, a little girl towards the end of the second year, after being jumped by her father, wants him to jump her mother also, says, in default of the word "jump," "Make mamma high". Robert Hamerling, the Austrian poet, when a child, being told by his sick mother that he had not said something she wished him to say, answered, "I said it, but you didn't hear, you are poorly, and so blind in the ear". Quite pretty metaphors are sometimes hit upon, as when a little boy of two seeing his father putting a piece of wood on the fire said, "Flame going to eat it". A boy of twenty-seven months ingeniously said, "It rains off," for "The rain has left off". Once a girl about the same age as the boy hit on the idiom, "No two 'tatoes left," for "Only one potato is left". Pretty constructions sometimes appear in these make-shifts, as when a little girl of whom Mrs. Meynell tells, wishing to know how far she might go in spending money on fruit, asked, "What mustn't it be more than?"

The Interpreter of Words.

There is one part of this task of mastering our language which deserves especial notice, viz., the puzzling out of the meanings we put, or try to put, into our words.

Many good stories of children show that they have a way of sadly misunderstanding our words. This arises often from the ignorance of the child and the narrowness of his experience, as when a Sunday school scholar understood the story of the good Samaritan to mean that a gentleman came and poured some paraffin (i.e., oil) over the poor man. By a child's mind what we call accidentals often get taken to be the real meaning. A boy and a girl, twins, had been dressed alike. Later on the boy was put into a "suit". A lady asked the girl about this time whether they were not the twins, when she replied, "No, we used to be". "Twin" was inseparably associated in her mind with the similarity in dress.

It should be remembered, too, that we greatly add to the difficulties of the small student of our language by reason of the ambiguities of our expressions, and of our short and elliptical modes of speaking. It was a quite natural misconception when an American child, noting that children were "half price" at a certain show, wanted his mother to get a baby now that they were cheap. Many another child besides Jean Ingelow has been saddened at being told by her father or other grown-up who was dancing her on his knee that he must put her down as he "had a bone in his leg". Much misapprehension arises, too from our figurative use of language, which the little listener is apt to interpret in a very literal way, as when a small boy indignantly resented the statement of his mother who was driving him behind a rather skittish pony, "Pony has lost his head".

Children are desirous of understanding us and make brave efforts to put meanings into our words, sometimes falling comically short of the mark. A little fellow of two who had been called "fat" by his nurse when given his bath, afterwards proceeded to call his father "fat" when he saw him taking his bath. "Fat" had by a natural misconception taken on the meaning of "naked". It was a simple movement of childish thought when a little school-girl answered the question of the Inspector, "What is an average?" by saying, "What the hen lays eggs on". She had heard her mother say, "The hen lays so many eggs 'on the average' every week," and had no doubt imagined a little myth about this average.

It is the same with what is read to them. Where they do not recognise a meaning they invent one, or if necessary substitute an intelligible word for an unintelligible one. Young Hermiston in R. L. Stevenson's last story naturally enough said in speaking of his father, the "hanging judge," "It were better for that man if a milestone were bound about his neck". Similarly they will invert the relations of words in order to arrive at something like a meaning. Mr. Canton relates in his pretty sketch of a child, The Invisible Playmate, that his little heroine, who knew the lines in Struwwelpeter—

The doctor came and shook his head,
And gave him nasty physic too—

was told that she would catch a cold, and that she at once replied, "And will the doctor come and shook my head?" It was so much more natural to suppose that when the doctor came and did something this was carried out on the person of the patient.

There is something of this same impatience of meaningless sayings, of the same keen desire to import a meaning into strange words, in children's "word-play," as we call it. For example, a little boy about four years old heard his mother speak of nurse's neuralgia, from which she had been suffering for some time. He thereupon exclaimed, "I don't think it's new ralgia, I call it old ralgia". Was this playful punning or a half-serious attempt to correct a misstatement? A child called his doll "Shakespeare" because its spear-like legs could be shaken. We know that adults sometimes do the same kind of thing, as a cabman I once overheard speaking to somebody about putting down "ashphalt". We all like to feel at home with words, and if they look dreadfully strange we do our best to give them a look of old acquaintance.

It should be added that children, though they eke out their deficiencies by inventing new verbal forms and putting new meanings into our words, have on the whole a vast respect for words. This is seen in their way of stickling for accuracy when others repeat familiar word-forms. The zeal of a child in correcting the language not only of other children, but of grown-ups, and the comical errors he will now and again fall into in exercising his corrective function, are well known to parents. Sometimes he shows himself the most absurd of pedants. "Shall I read to you out of this book, baby?" asked a mother of her boy, about two and a half years old. "No," replied the infant, "not out of dot book, but somepy inside of it." The same little stickler for verbal accuracy, when his nurse asked him, "Are you going to build your bricks, baby?" replied solemnly, "We don't build bricks, we make them and then build with them". Yet such disagreeable pedantry shows how conscientiously the small curly head is trying to bring clearness and order into the dark tangle of our speech, and it ought not to be treated harshly.