Open [38.8 MB] - Finnegans Wake Extensible Elucidation Treasury

4] PLAYING AT LANGUAGE 149
" t;
know German ?
Yes." (Frans looked rather crestfallen :
the
was
servants
talking
had often
German.
said
So
of
he
his invented language that he
"
went on) Do you know
Japanese ? " " No." (Delighted) " So remember when I say
something you don't understand, it's Japanese."
"
It is the same everywhere. Hawthorne writes : Pearl mumbled
something into his ear, that sounded, indeed, like human language,
but was only such gibberish as children may be heard amusing
themselves with, by the hour together " (The Scarlet Letter, 173).
"
Children prefer the shadow to the substance.
And R. L. Stevenson :
When they might be speaking intelligibly together, they chatter
senseless gibberish by the hour, and are quite happy because they
are making believe to speak French" (Virginibus P., 236; cf.
Glenconner, p. 40; Stern, pp. 76, 91, 103). Meringer's boy (2.1)
took the music-book and sang a tune of his own making with
incomprehensible words.
Children also take delight in varying the sounds of real words,
introducing, for instance, alliterations, as " Sing a song of sixpence,
A socket full of sye," etc. Frans at 2 . 3 amused himself by rounding
all his vowels (o for a, y for ), and at 3 . 1 by making all words of
a verse line he had learnt begin with d, then the same words begin
with t. O'Shea (p. 32) says that " most children find pleasure
in the production of variations upon some of their familiar words.
The
Their purpose seems to be to test their ability to be original.
performance of an unusual act affords pleasure in linguistics as in
other matters. H., learning the word dessert, to illustrate, plays
with it for a time and exhibits it in a dozen or more variations
dissert, dishert, desot, dessert, and so on."
Rhythm and rime appeal strongly to the children's minds.
One English observer says that " a child in its third year will
copy the rhythm of songs and verses it has heard in nonsense
words." The same thing is noted by Meringer (p. 116) and
the rime
Stern (p. 103). Tony E. (2.10) suddenly made up
"
My mover, I lov-er," and Gordon M. . (2 6) never tired of repeating
a "
phrase of his own composition, Custard over mustard." A
Danish girl of 3.1 is reported as having a "curious knack of
twisting all words into rimes : bestemor hestemor prestemor,
Gudrun sludrun pludrun, etc."
VIEL 5. Secret Languages.
Children, as we have seen, at first employ play-language for
its own sake, with no arriere-pensee, but as they get older they
may see that such language has the advantage of not being understood
by their elders, and so they may develop a '
'
secret language