# Woman who speaks "no intelligible language"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 19, 2007, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558 "2007-01-19T04:19:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/21 "2007-01-23T07:01:26Z")
[QUOTE=Johanna] Up in the hills of Ratanakiri is a secret hollow where the milk-carton kids hang out. They have rediscovered the art of flint knapping and have stone knives for hairstyling. In fact, she had several friends who were learning the art and she let them practice on her. But she has promised not to reveal the existence of the feral kids’ clubhouse. Well, someone suggest a more plausible scenario, then! [/QUOTE] Long hair gets caught on things and ripped out. Only hair that isn’t long enough to be removed that way remains. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/22 "2007-01-23T09:23:12Z")
[QUOTE=Mangosteen] One local who saw her doesn’t buy the story because her hair was quite short when she was found. He said, “Who cut her hair in the jungle?” [/QUOTE] My hair doesn’t go beyond the bottom of my ribs; I once went for three years without a haircut and didn’t even have open ends, but it simply doesn’t grow more. One of my female cousins can’t get it beyond her shoulderblades. I’m always amazed by how many book characters, both male and female, have hair that grows from “shaved” to “sit on it” within months. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/23 "2007-01-23T15:36:53Z")
[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus] And I spent my junior year abroad in Germany, and towards the end of that time I found that my English was getting a bit sticky. Even though I was one of a large contingent of Americans, all from the University of California, we often used German among ourselves, or sometimes a weird kind of “Germlish” in which key words of English would be replaced by German ones. For instance, we’d say, “we had an Auseinandersetzung” instead of “we had an argument”. While there and still immersed in German, at UCSD for the next year, I thought and dreamed in German, and never thought I would lose that capability, but I find it a great deal more difficult to do that now. [/QUOTE] A similar anecdote: My family was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army, and my parents bought some furniture from a local store in Munich. The owner was apparently a German guy who spoke English with a pretty strong German accent. He had to search for words at times, but I could speak with him (in English) well enough. It turns out that he was originally from Iowa! He had been stationed in Germany in the 1950s, married a German girl, and settled permanently in Germany. When I met him, he had been living in Germany for almost 40 years, and had evidently lost much of his English. ---
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2007, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/24 "2007-01-23T17:04:30Z")
[QUOTE=Mangosteen] One local who saw her doesn’t buy the story because her hair was quite short when she was found. He said, “Who cut her hair in the jungle?” [/QUOTE] The story I read in the Herald a few days ago also mentioned that a man had been seen at the same time but the villagers were unable to capture him. Perhaps he had a blade of some kind? Who knows. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/25 "2007-01-24T01:23:30Z")
Heck, if she was stealing food, she could have stolen a knife too, and hacked her own hair. If I were surviving naked in the jungle, living off the land, I’d definitely make nicking someone’s knife a top priority. For survival purposes, with hairstyling an afterthought. ---
**Author:** ![Pullet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Pullet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pullet)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/26 "2007-01-24T01:49:07Z")
Ditto what **Johanna** said. Even if she didn’t steal a knife, she could have hacked at her own hair with a sharpened rock. If I somehow managed to live in the jungle, I would have found a way to keep my hair on the short side. Not like I got a whole lot else to do with my day. Ditto the language loss. My dad was born in Thailand, but has been living in English speaking countries for the last 40 years. He left by himself and married a non-Thai, so it’s been emersive English all the way. He still talks with his family in Thai, but he complains about how much he’s forgotten and often peppers his conversations with English. His sisters, who came to the US as a unit and married native Thais, have kept much more of their language. They had eachother to talk to. ---
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/27 "2007-01-24T17:08:55Z")
You are all ignoring one thing: speaking a language is not the same as understanding it. It’s implausible that a normal individual who acquired a language as a child would not understand spoken speech, no matter how long they’ve been out of it. It is common for people to forget or “search” for individual words to speak, but the root of the language is deeply seated. With all the stories of people “losing” their language after years of disuse (I don’t believe it’s possible to lose understanding of a childhood language), why do most immigrants retain their accent after years of speaking english? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2007, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/28 "2007-01-24T17:24:19Z")
[QUOTE=Rusalka] You are all ignoring one thing: speaking a language is not the same as understanding it. It’s implausible that a normal individual who acquired a language as a child would not understand spoken speech, no matter how long they’ve been out of it. It is common for people to forget or “search” for individual words to speak, but the root of the language is deeply seated. [/QUOTE] She does understand, she just doesn’t speak. According to yahoo’s article yesterday, anyway (which I can no longer find online), she obeys directions like “sit down” “stand up”, etc. She also has scars around her wrists, indicating she may have been tied up for long periods of time. It’s possible some sicko kidnapped her at some point and has been cutting her hair and nails short and keeping her for work or amusement. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/29 "2007-01-25T05:26:38Z")
**WhyNot** , depressing as it is to contemplate, your scenario is probably the most plausible… shades of _Oryx and Crake_. ---
**Author:** ![groman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/73ab20/32.png) [@groman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/groman)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/30 "2007-01-25T06:08:24Z")
[QUOTE=Rusalka] With all the stories of people “losing” their language after years of disuse (I don’t believe it’s possible to lose understanding of a childhood language), why do most immigrants retain their accent after years of speaking english? [/QUOTE] I could imagine completely forgetting my first language and still having an accent in English. My accent no longer has anything to do with my original language and is more like a speech impediment – it is easier for me to pronounce certain phonemes in an incorrect fashion. A good example is no **rt** h, po **rt** or thi **rt** y, I roll the “r” into the “t” if I’m not paying attention, in a way that’s foreign to both English and Russian (my first language). I can no longer form proper Russian sentences (I use English sentence structure) and have a slight accent – and I haven’t exactly not been using it. I often have difficulty expressing the simplest things in a language that I spoke exclusively for the first thirteen years of my life. Sure, I can write college level Russian with a good spell-checker but it takes me forever. In conclusion – if I avoided speaking, reading and writing Russian for 10 years entirely I am almost certain I would not be able to speak or write it. Ability to read and understand wouldn’t fade but saying the simplest sentence would pose a challenge. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 8:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/31 "2007-01-25T08:33:47Z")
[QUOTE=Rusalka] With all the stories of people “losing” their language after years of disuse (I don’t believe it’s possible to lose understanding of a childhood language), why do most immigrants retain their accent after years of speaking english? [/QUOTE] I have an accent in Spanish (actually two), I have an accent in English that I know has changed over time although it’s always been more American than UK. When I’m speaking with someone whose own accent is very strong I have to be careful not to copy it, I’m a natural mimic. My Spanish accents are both the Northern kind: they’re very strongly identifiable to a native Spanish speaker, not to foreigners. Spanish actresses with my kind of accent are NOT used to play Hispanics, in foreign media: they’re used to portray Italians or French. We soung “vaguely latin but not identifiable”. But someone with an very deep Andalusian accent, who is unable to pronounce the Z and skips half the Ss will go on doing the same in English, Russian or Swahili. And a Rioplatense will have that singsong undertone. That doesn’t mean they’d be able to go back to speaking their dialects perfectly after 40 years of not doing so. ---
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/32 "2007-01-25T17:46:24Z")
Groman, if you’d read my post carefully, you’d see I quite specifically said that I doubted someone could ever lose their ability to “understand” their first language, and that understanding is different from speaking. Are you saying you don’t understand your spoken childhood language? I have personal experience. My parents spoke in a different language to me as a child and the _understanding_ of that spoken language has never diminished over the years, not even slightly, and I can’t imagine it ever will. I knew an old lady, the grandmother of a friend who was 80-ish. She came from Italy but hadn’t spoken Italian since she was a child and couldn’t speak it anymore. She told me however, that she could understand it when she overheard it, and it made her feel very emotional. For some reason “use it or lose it” only applies to language output, not understanding, for a native language. I find that very interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Rusalka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Rusalka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rusalka)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2007, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558/33 "2007-01-25T17:50:42Z")
Sorry, I missed the part where you said understanding wouldn’t fade! Doh! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/woman-who-speaks-no-intelligible-language/388558.md?page=1)