Feral Children

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Recommended: Theories into language development

Written by Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action, introduces the concept that would allow the “human fitness to survive” as it “requires the ability to talk, write, listen, and read in ways that increase the chance for you and fellow members of the species to survive together.” Contradictory to Hayakawa’s opinion, it is merely a helpful stepping stone, and in some cases, language in the literal sense, isn’t even needed for humans to survive as shown in the multiple cases of feral children.
Feral children, in most cases, develop the ability to survive as animals survive, but in the vast majority of the known cases of capture, these children have never learned to speak and have either retained their animal-like tendencies or have exhibited …show more content…

That person is not able to fully grasp the art of social language, as well as isn’t able to form a fully structured sentence, and may also experience mental as well as physical retardation. Due to the mental constraints and limitations inflicted by the lack of human care and interaction, that person usually isn’t able to grasp the concept of language even as they age which brings up even more questions of how essential is language when broken down as to what age is language the most crucial to be taught at. The retardation can be influenced by the isolation of that person from the community as a whole at a young age which can then force them to lose the precious window of time to learn a language. As experienced by the feral children as they were growing older, reports have indicated that they found it exceedingly difficult to even learn some words of a language. One theorist even proposed that because of the lasting effects inflicted by isolation, these experiences “indicate that the foundation for learning language seems to be built at a young age, and missing that window during your early toddler/child years may prevent you from having the opportunity to acquire a language later in life” as the mind has already developed into a set way of

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