The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-DayChamberlain, Alexander Francis
Science
The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought: Studies of the Activities and Influences of the Child Among Primitive Peoples, Their Analogues and Survivals in the Civilization of To-Day
Chamberlain, Alexander Francis
Child rearing; Children -- Folklore; Folklore and children
That the use of secret languages and the invention of them by children
is widespread and prevalent at home, at school, in the playground, in
the street, is evident from the exhaustive series of articles in which
Dr. F. S. Krauss (281) of Vienna has treated of "Secret Languages." Out
of some two hundred forms and fashions there cited a very large
proportion indeed belong to the period of childhood and youth and the
scenes of boyish and girlish activity. We have languages for games, for
secret societies, for best friends, for school-fellows, for country and
town, for boys and girls, etc. Dr. Oscar Chrisman (206) has quite
recently undertaken to investigate the nature and extent of use of these
secret languages in America, with gratifying results. A study of the
child at the period in which the language-making instinct is most active
cannot be without interest to pedagogy, and it would not be without
value to inquire what has been the result of the universal neglect of
language-teaching in the primary and lower grade grammar
schools--whether the profusion of secret languages runs parallel with
this diversion of the child-mind from one of its most healthful and
requisite employments, or whether it has not to some extent atrophied
the linguistic sense.
The far-reaching ramifications of "secret languages" are evidenced by
the fact that a language called "Tut" by school-children of Gonzales,
Texas, is almost identical in its alphabet with the "Guitar Language,"
of Bonyhad, in Hungary, the "Bob Language," of Czernowitz, in Austria,
and another language of the same sort from Berg. The travels of the
Texas secret language are stated by Dr. Chrisman to be as follows: "This
young lady ... learned it from her mother's servant, a negro girl; this
girl learned it from a negro girl who got it at a female negro school at
Austin, Texas, where it was brought by a negro girl from Galveston,
Texas, who learned it from a negro girl who had come from Jamaica" (208.
305).
Evidence is accumulating to show that these secret languages of children
exist in all parts of the world, and it would be a useful and
instructive labour were some one to collect all available material and
compose an exhaustive scientific monograph on the subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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