therefore, is to examine how we can get this mental plant, this
foundation substance, this abundant mastered language best developed in
the individual, and how far we may go to ensure this best development
for all children born into the world.

From the ninth month onward the child begins serious attempts to talk.
In order that it may learn to do this as easily as possible, it
requires to be surrounded by people speaking one language, and speaking
it with a uniform accent. Those who are most in the child's hearing
should endeavour to speak--even when they are not addressing the child
--deliberately and clearly. All authorities are agreed upon the
mischievous effect of what is called "baby talk," the use of an
extensive sham vocabulary, a sort of deciduous milk vocabulary that
will presently have to be shed again. Froebel and Preyer join hands on
this. The child's funny little perversions of speech are really genuine
attempts to say the right word, and we simply cause trouble and hamper
development if we give back to the seeking mind its own blunders again.
When a child wants to indicate milk, it wants to say milk, and not
"mooka" or "mik," and when it wants to indicate bed, the needed word is
not "bedder" or "bye-bye," but "bed." But we give the little thing no
chance to get on in this way until suddenly one day we discover it is
"time the child spoke plainly." Preyer has pointed out very
instructively the way in which the quite sufficiently difficult matter
of the use of I, mine, me, my, you, yours, and your is made still more
difficult by those about the child adopting irregularly the
experimental idioms it produces. When a child says to its mother, "Me
go mome," it is doing its best to speak English, and its remark should
be received without worrying comment; but when a mother says to her
child, "Me go mome," she is simply wasting an opportunity of teaching
her child its mother-tongue. One sympathizes with her all too readily,