When I saw Hellen Keller first,
she was 6 years and 8 months old.
She had been blind and deaf,
and mute since her 19th month,
as the result of an illness.
She had no way of communicating
with those around her,
except a few imitative signs
that she had made for herself.
A push meant go and a pull meant come, and so on.
She had observed that we did not use the hands
when we were talking to each other.
And I let her see,
by putting her hand on my face
how we talked with our mouths.
She felt the vibrations
of the spoken word
Instantly, she spelled
I want to talk with my mouth.
That seemed impossible.
But after experimenting
for a time,
we found that
placing her hand in this position,
the thumb resting on the throat, right at the larnyx
the first finger on the lips, the second on the nose,
we found that she could feel
the vibrations of spoken words.
For instance,
the throat, she feels the "g", the hard "g"
[pronounces the hard g sound, helen echoes] guh, guh
and on the lips, she feels the, uh,
and the the "k" sound,
[pronouncing the k sound, helen echoing] kuh, kuh
and the lips, she feels the , uh, "b"
[pronouncing the b sound, helen echoes] buh,
with the second finger on the nose, the nasal sounds
the "nnn" [Helen echoes "nnn"]
The first word
she learned to articulate
was the little word, "it".
With the hand in this position,
I made vowel, "ihh" (helen echoes) "ihh"
She felt it, "ihh" (Helen echoes "ihh")
Then I made the "t", "thh" (Helen echos) "thh"
She feels it with the finger on her lip.
on my lips.
Then I put the two letters together,
to form word, "it"
(Helen) It.
and the first word was learned.
After her seventh lesson,
she was able to speak the sentence,
word by word,
I - am - not - dumb - now. [Helen echoes word by word]
[Captions by Captionwire.com]