I remember hearing of a dutchman, born in Jakarta, returned to the
Netherland when 4 or 5, having had an ayah like RK, who had had no contact
whatsoever with Indonesia until at 45 he had to go there again and
discovering in the street in front of his hotel that he understood what
people were saying.
Closer to me : when 4, my wife went to Sweden with her swedish born mother
who left her for a few weeks with friends who spoke only Swedish. She learnt
Swedish very quickly and completely forgot French. It took her some weeks
again to recover it ... and loose Swedish. However when she returned to
Sweden several years later, she re-learnt it very quickly. Obviously, early
learnt language is stored somewhere in areas of the memory that take
sometime to call back.
Incidentally, there is a book by a French anthropologist on "enfants
sauvages" which records all known cases of children found rescued by animals
(many of them from India), in addition with a fascinating report by a French
doctor at the Paris Institution for deaf-mute on a case of such a child
found in France early in the 19th century, that was made into a film by F
Truffaut. Quite relevant to Mowgly's strory.
MXR
----- Message d'origine -----
De : <[log in to unmask]>
À : <[log in to unmask]>
Envoyé : lundi 29 novembre 1999 16:31
Objet : Kipling and Urdu
> The linguistic confusions in the minds of Anglo-Indian children are
> apparent in "Tod's Amendment" (Plain Tales) where the 5-year old boy
> has to re-arrange his thoughts into English, having been told not to
> speak the vernacular by his parents. He also says a few things in the
> vernacular that make his mother say that Tods must be sent back
> before the next Hot Weather. As ever, there could be an auto-
> biographical element in all this.
> _____________________________________________
> Professor Tim Connell
> Division of Languages
> Room A2.49 College Building
> City University, London EC1V OHB
> Tel: 0171-477 8265 Fax: 0171-477 8266
> Homepage: http://www.city.ac.uk/languages
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