Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant (24 page)

An interesting question that language researchers are beginning to explore is whether or not my ability with languages extends to other forms of language, such as sign language. In 2005 I participated in an experiment carried out by Gary Morgan of the Department of Language and Communication Science at City University in London. Dr Morgan is a researcher in British Sign Language (BSL), the first or preferred language of around 70,000 deaf or hearing-impaired people in the UK. Many thousands of hearing people also use BSL, which is a visual/spatial language that uses the hands, body, face and head to convey meaning. The test was designed to see whether I could learn signed words as quickly and easily as written or spoken ones. A signer sat opposite me at a table and produced a total of sixty-eight different signs. After each I was shown a page with four illustrations and asked to indicate the one that I thought best described the sign I had just been shown. The signed words varied in meaning from the relatively simple ‘hat’ to more difficult signs for concepts such as ‘restaurant’ and ‘agriculture’. I was able to correctly identify two-thirds of the signs from the possible choices presented to me and it was concluded that I showed ‘very good sign aptitude’. The researchers now plan to teach me British Sign Language using one-to-one tuition with a signer to compare my acquisition of the language with that of the others I know.

Esperanto is another very different kind of language. I first read the word ‘Esperanto’ many years ago in a library book, but it was only following the purchase of my first computer that I discovered any more about it. What drew me most of all to the language was the fact that its vocabulary is a blend of various languages, mostly European, while its grammar is consistent and logical. I very quickly
esperanti
is
(became a speaker of Esperanto) from reading various online texts in the language and from writing to other Esperanto speakers from all over the world.

The Esperanto language (the word means ‘one who hopes’) was the creation of Dr Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, an eye doctor from Bialystok in what is now Poland. He first published his language in 1887 and the first world congress of Esperanto speakers was held in France in 1905. Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy-to-learn universal second language to help foster international understanding. Today, there are estimated to be somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 Esperanto speakers worldwide.

Esperanto’s grammar has several interesting features. The first is that the different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all nouns end in -o, all adjectives in -a, adverbs in -e, infinitives in -i. For example: the word
rapido
would translate as ‘speed’,
rapida
as ‘quick’,
rapide
as ‘quickly’ and
rapidi
as ‘to hurry’.

Verbs do not change for the subject, as in most natural languages:
mi estas
(‘I am’),
vi estas
(‘you are’),
li estas
(‘he is’),
i estas
(‘she is’),
ni estas
(‘we are’),
ili estas
(‘they are’). Past tense verbs always end in -is (
mi estis
– ‘I was’), future tense in -os (
vi estos
– ‘you will be’).

Many of Esperanto’s words are formed using affixes – the ending ‘-ejo’, for example, signifies ‘place’, as in the words:
lernejo
(‘school’),
infanejo
(‘nursery’) and
trinkejo
(‘bar’). Another commonly used suffix is ‘-ilo’, meaning ‘tool or instrument’, and is found in words such as:
hakilo
(‘axe’),
flugilo
(‘wing’) and
ser
ilo
(‘search engine’).

Perhaps the most famous feature of Esperanto’s word-building grammar is its use of the prefix ‘mal-’ to indicate the opposite of something. This feature is used extensively throughout the language:
bona
(‘good’) –
malbona
(‘evil’),
ri
a
(‘rich’) –
malri
a
(‘poor’),
granda
(‘big’) –
malgranda
(‘small’),
dekstra
(‘right’) –
maldekstra
(‘left’),
fermi
(‘to close’) –
malfermi
(‘to open’),
amiko
(‘friend’) –
malamiko
(‘enemy’).

The creation and use of idiomatic speech is generally discouraged in Esperanto, however some examples of ‘Esperanto slang’ do exist. A new learner of the language might be called a
fre
bakito
from the German
frischgebacken
(‘fresh-baked’), where the standard Esperanto word would be a
komencanto
(‘beginner’). An example of an Esperanto euphemism is
la necesejo
(‘the necessary place’) for a bathroom/WC.

Tony Attwood, a clinical psychologist and author of
Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals
, notes that some individuals with Asperger’s have the ability to create their own form of language (known as neologisms). He gives as examples a girl’s description of her ankle as ‘the wrist of my foot’ and ice cubes as ‘water bones’. Dr Attwood describes this ability as ‘one of the endearing and genuinely creative aspects of Asperger’s syndrome’. After the birth of my twin sisters I created the word
biplets
to describe them, knowing that a bicycle had two wheels and a tricycle three, and that the name for three babies born at one time was triplets. Another of my childhood neologisms was the word
pramble
meaning to go out for a long walk (a ramble) with a baby in a pram; something my parents did frequently.

For several years as a child I tinkered with the idea of creating my own language, as a way of relieving the loneliness I often felt and to draw on the delight I experienced in words. Sometimes, when I felt a particularly strong emotion or experienced something that I felt was especially beautiful, a new word would spontaneously form in my mind to express it and I had no idea where those words came from. In contrast, I often found the language of my peers jarring and confusing. I was regularly teased for speaking in long, careful and overly formal sentences. When I tried to use one of my own created words in conversation, to express something of what I was feeling or experiencing inside, it was rarely understood. My parents discouraged me from ‘talking in a funny way’.

I continued to dream that one day I would speak a language that was my own, that I would not be teased or reprimanded for using and that would express something of what it felt to be me. After leaving school I found I had the time to begin seriously to pursue such an idea. I wrote words down as they occurred to me and experimented with different methods of pronunciation and sentence building. I called my language ‘Mänti’ (pronounced ‘
man
-tee’) from the Finnish word
mänty
meaning pine tree. Pines are native to most of the Northern hemisphere and are particularly numerous across parts of Scandinavia and the Baltic region. Many of the words used in Mänti are of Scandinavian and Baltic origin. There is another reason for the choice of name: pine trees often grow together in large numbers and symbolise friendship and community.

Mänti is a work in progress with a developed grammar and a vocabulary of more than a thousand words. It has attracted the interest of several language researchers who believe it may help shed more light on my linguistic abilities.

One of the things I like most about playing with language is the creation of new words and ideas. I try in Mänti to make the words reflect the relationships between different things:
hamma
(‘tooth’) and
hemme
(‘ant’ – a biting insect) and
rât
(‘wire’) and
râtio
(‘radio’) for example. Some words have multiple, related meanings; the word
puhu
for example can mean ‘wind’, ‘breath’ or ‘spirit’.

Compound words are common in Mänti:
puhekello
(‘telephone’, literally ‘speak-bell’),
ilmal
v
(‘aeroplane’, literally ‘airship’),
tontöö
(‘music’, literally ‘tone art’) and
r
talö
(‘parliament’, literally ‘discussion place’) are various examples.