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Miss
Keller's vowels are not firm. Her AWFUL is nearly AWFIL. The wavering is
caused by the absence of accent on FUL, for she pronounces FULL correctly.
She
sometimes mispronounces as she reads aloud and comes on a word which she
happens never to 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 much in their books that they
have neglected 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
distinctness of her words, but she can do much to make her speech clearer.
When
she was at the Wright-Humason School in New York, Dr. Humason tried to
improve her voice, not 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 Keller's speech is easy to understand.
Some understand her readily; others do not. Her friends grow accustomed to
her speech and forget that it is different from that of any one else.
Children seldom have any difficulty in understanding her; which suggests
that her deliberate measured speech is like theirs, before they come 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 learned to speak. Miss Sullivan's account in her
address at Chautauqua, in July, 1894, at the meeting of The American
Association to Promote the Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, is substantially
like Miss Keller's in points of fact.
MISS
SULLIVAN'S ACCOUNT OF MISS KELLER'S SPEECH
It
was three years from the time when Helen began to communicate 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 become
very proficient in the use of the manual alphabet, which was her only means
of communication with the outside world; through it she had acquired a
vocabulary which enabled her to converse freely, read intelligently, and
write with comparative ease and correctness. Nevertheless, the impulse to
utter audible sounds was strong within her, and the constant efforts which I
made to repress this instinctive tendency, which I feared in time would
become unpleasant, were of no avail. I made no effort to teach her to speak,
because I regarded her inability to watch the lips of others as an
insurmountable obstacle. But she gradually became conscious that her way of
communicating 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 explained to her that some deaf
children were taught to speak, but that they could see their teachers'
mouths, and that that was a very great assistance to them. But she
interrupted me to say she was very sure she could feel my mouth very well.
Soon after this conversation, a lady came to see her and told her about the
deaf and blind Norwegian child, Ragnhild Kaata, who had been taught to speak
and understand what her teacher said to her by touching 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 necessity of correct
instruction, since her heart was set upon learning to talk; and, feeling my
own incompetence to teach her, never having given the subject of
articulation serious study, I went with my pupil for advice and assistance,
to Miss Sarah Fuller. Miss Fuller was delighted with Helen's earnestness and
enthusiasm, and at once began to teach her. In a few lessons she learned
nearly all of the English sounds, and in less than a month she was able to
articulate a great many words distinctly. From the first she was not content
to be drilled in single sounds, but was impatient to pronounce words and
sentences. The length of the word or the difficulty of the arrangement of
the elements never seemed to discourage her. But, with all her eagerness and
intelligence, learning to speak taxed her powers to the utmost. But there
was satisfaction in seeing from day to day the evidence of growing mastery
and the possibility of final success. And Helen's success has been more
complete and inspiring than any of her friends expected, and the child's
delight in being able to utter her thoughts in living and distinct speech is
shared by all who witness her pleasure when strangers tell her that they
understand 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 opinion regarding it. I believe that I have
hardly begun yet to know what is possible. Teachers of the deaf often
express surprise that Helen's speech is so good when she has not received
any regular instruction in speech since the first few lessons given her by
Miss Fuller. I can only say in reply, "This is due to habitual
imitation and practice! practice! practice!" Nature has determined how
the child shall learn to speak, and all we can do is to aid him in the
simplest, easiest way possible, by encouraging him to observe and imitate
the vibrations in the voice.
Some
further details appear in an earlier, more detailed account, which Miss
Sullivan wrote for the Perkins Institution Report of 1891.
I
knew that Laura Bridgman had shown the same intuitive desire to produce
sounds, and had even learned to pronounce a few simple words, which she took
great delight in using, and I did not doubt that Helen could accomplish as
much as this. I thought, however, that the advantage she would derive would
not repay her for the time and labour that such an experiment would cost.
Moreover,
the absence of hearing renders the 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 teaching a deaf child to articulate--a process which may be detrimental
to the pupil's intellectual development. In the very nature of things,
articulation is an unsatisfactory means of education; while the use of the
manual alphabet quickens and invigorates mental activity, since through it
the deaf child is brought into close contact with the English language, and
the highest and most abstract ideas may be conveyed to the mind readily and
accurately. Helen's case proved it to be also an invaluable aid in acquiring
articulation. She was already perfectly familiar with words and the
construction of sentences, and had only mechanical difficulties to overcome.
Moreover, she knew what a pleasure speech would be to her, and this definite
knowledge of what she was striving for gave 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 teaching Helen to speak, it may be well to state
briefly to what extent she had used the vocal organs before she began to
receive regular instruction in articulation. When she was stricken down with
the illness which resulted in her loss of sight and hearing, at the age of
nineteen months, she was learning to talk. The unmeaning babblings of the
infant were becoming day by day conscious 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 had ceased to speak intelligibly because she could no longer hear a
sound. She continued to exercise her vocal organs mechanically, 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 significance to them, and with one exception they were
produced not with any intention of communicating with those around her, but
from the sheer necessity of exercising her innate, organic, and hereditary
faculty of expression. She always attached a meaning to the word water,
which was one of the first sounds her baby lips learned to form, and it was
the only word which she continued to 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. Nevertheless, it was the only
sign she ever made for water, and not until she had learned to spell the
word with her fingers did she forget the spoken symbol. The word water, and
the gesture which corresponds to the word good-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 necessity of communicating with those
around her. Her little hands felt every object and observed every movement
of the persons about her, and she was quick to imitate 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 understood by those who
knew her. The only signs which I think she may have invented 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 understood,
she would become violent. In the years of her mental imprisonment 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 mother's lips.
When
she was not occupied, she wandered restlessly about the house, making
strange though rarely unpleasant sounds. I have seen her rock her doll,
making a continuous, monotonous sound, keeping one hand on her throat, while
the fingers of the other hand noted the movements of her lips. This was in
imitation of her mother's crooning 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 happened to be near her, to see if he were laughing also. If she
detected no smile, she gesticulated excitedly, trying to convey her thought;
but if she failed to make her companion laugh, she sat still for a few
moments, with a troubled and disappointed expression. She was pleased with
anything which made a noise. She liked to feel the cat purr; and if by
chance she felt a dog in the act of barking, she showed great pleasure. She
always liked to stand by the piano when some one was playing and singing.
She kept one hand on the singer's 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 continuous sound which she called singing.
The only words she had learned to pronounce with any degree of distinctness
previous to March, 1890, were PAPA, MAMMA, BABY, SISTER. These words she had
caught without instruction from the lips of friends. It will be seen that
they contain three vowel and six consonant 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 consonants were, and indeed
still are, very difficult for her to pronounce in connection with one
another in the same word; she often suppresses the one and changes the
other, and sometimes she replaces both by an analogous sound with soft
aspiration. The confusion between 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 Keller's speech
today.]
When
she had been talking for less than a week, she met her friend, Mr.
Rodocanachi, and immediately began to struggle with the pronunciation of his
name; nor would she give it up until she was able to articulate the word
distinctly. Her interest never diminished for a moment; and, in her
eagerness to overcome 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 accounts by Miss Keller's 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 can listen to conversation
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 communication,
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
Keller's hand.
President
Roosevelt had little difficulty last spring in making Miss Keller understand
him, and especially requested Miss Sullivan not to spell into her hand. She
got every word, for the President's speech is notably distinct. Other people
say they have no success in making Miss Keller "hear" them.
A
few friends to whom she is accustomed, like Mrs. A. C. Pratt, and Mr. J. E.
Chamberlin, can pass a whole day with her and tell her everything without
the manual alphabet. The ability to read the lips helps Miss Keller in
getting corrections 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
accomplishment than a necessity.
It
must be remembered that speech contributed in no way to her fundamental
education, though without the ability to speak she could hardly have gone to
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 American Association to Promote the Teaching 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
understand 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 instruction. It seems very
strange to me that there should be this difference of opinion; I cannot
understand how any one interested in our education can fail to appreciate
the satisfaction we feel in being able to express our thoughts in living
words. Why, I use speech constantly, and I cannot begin to tell you how much
pleasure it gives me to do so. Of course I know that it is not always easy
for strangers to understand me, but it will be by and by; and in the
meantime I have the unspeakable happiness of knowing that my family and
friends rejoice in 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 companionship of a great
many persons from whom I should be entirely cut off if I could not talk.
I
can remember the time before I learned to speak, and how I used to struggle
to express my thoughts by means of the manual alphabet--how my thoughts used
to beat against my finger tips like little birds striving to gain their
freedom, until one day Miss Fuller opened wide the prison-door and let them
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 grace and beauty
that had once been theirs; indeed, nothing was left save the impulse to fly,
but that was something. One can never consent to creep when one feels an
impulse to soar. But, nevertheless, 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 discouragements; but I kept on trying,
knowing that patience and perseverance would win in the end. And while I
worked, I built the most beautiful air-castles, and dreamed dreams, the
pleasantest 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
once more, sweetened every effort and made every failure an incentive to try
harder next time. So I want to say to those who are trying to learn to speak
and those who are teaching them: Be of good cheer. Do not think of to-days
failures, but of the success that may come to-morrow. You have set
yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you
will find a joy in overcoming 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 something beautiful 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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