More Proof That All Scientists Are Evil
If this guy is your parent, you need to flee the house. Like, RIGHT NOW.
Remember way back when we all lost our collective cool because some media professor did a “social study” on how being an enormous griefer in PvP does not make one popular? Well, this might just well top it.
A charming fellow named d’Armond Speers (yeah, I know, another guy named d’Armond — they’re practically sold in 10-packs these days) who has a Ph.D. in computational linguistics and, as a natural result, speaks fluent Klingon, decided to conduct a little experiment on whether or not a new person (aka “baby”, “infant”, “toddler”) would pick up the language if that’s all the new person ever heard.
Oh, and yeah, he did this to his own son. For the first three years of the kid’s life.
With the birth of his son 15 years ago, dedicated linguist d’Armond Speers embarked on the ultimate experiment: He spoke to him only in Klingon — the language of the alien race of “Star Trek” fame — for the first three years of his life.
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
Now, this happened 15 years ago, and we can only assume that after many, many years of therapy, the kid is okay and doesn’t have a panic attack whenever he sees Star Trek merchandising or DVDs, but this is right up there with one of the most idiotic parenting moves of all time. And instead of getting hauled away for, I don’t know, ensuring that his kid would always be beaten up in school because he could only communicate in harsh grunts and gutteral syllables, it helped land him a job down the road.
I really wonder where his wife was at (presumably she was massacred by Klingon associates after childbirth), but at least the poor kid survived:
As for Speers, who still gets nostalgic when he recalls singing the Klingon lullaby “May the Empire Endure” with his son at bedtime, the experiment was a dud. His son is now in high school and doesn’t speak a word of Klingon.
Yeah! Nostalgic for child abuse! Wooo!
- Posted in: General
If Klingon was the only language he spoke to the infant (assuming it’s a communicably language) then of course he’d pick it up.
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire French,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire German,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire Mandarin,” Speers said. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”
Infants can learn to Sign before they can speak. Clear evidence that they are far more intelligent than this idiot.
One last one before I sign off.
“I was interested in the question of whether or not lighter fluid poured into my palm and ignited would burn me,” Speers said. “It was definitely starting to hurt.”
What a tool.
What a sick #$$#%.
Is there a Klingon word for fail?
Jason (resident drunken Klingon idiot of Channel Massive)
DaHjaj ‘oH QaQ jaj Daq Hegh
“I was interested in the question of whether being struck by lightening would electrocute me,” Speers said. “It was definitely starting sizzle.”
But think of the scientific progress that could be made! To hell with human rights
*is always collectively cool*
Now I normally like your posts, but, seriously, what was the point of this article?
All you demonstrated here was a total lack of awareness to certain other cases of child abuse conducted by, shall we say, non-scientists, that served no purpose and did actually scar the child for life.
I have a friend who was only spoken to in French until he was three. He was born in, and has always lived in England. He speaks English fluently, has an English accent, and is one of the best writers and orators I saw throughout secondary school.
If this was, say, an obscure African language, would it be any different? No; no one would know it, as no one knows Klingon. It was an experiment that had unknown but evidently not severe effects on the child.
Provide some more evidence and I’ll take your side but this post is just ignorant and stupid.
P.S. I’m not condoning what he did, but I don’t personally see it as some sort of great evil because, as far as we know, the child didn’t suffer.
There is no shortage of idiots on this planet, or specifically in my beloved country. Most of the politicians are trying to get them out to vote. It doesn’t surprise me that this happened in the state where they thought Jesse Ventura and Al Franken as politicians were a good idea.
Canada is looking better and better every day. I think I’ll move to Red Deer.
Gotta side with Dril on this one. I know this is your blog, so do with it what you like, but it doesn’t seem to…”fit”
Red Deer smells of Cow Slaughter. Move to Calgary.
Why is everyone so outraged? Imagine if the kid’s father’s mother-tongue was Afrikaans and that’s all he was spoken to for the first three years of his life. How is that any different from this?
There are children I know who were born in Canada, spoken to Chinese all their lives and put through Chinese schooling until come high-school they are a Canadian who can barely read or write English/French.
Now if this man raised his child like a Klingon would raise theirs, we might have something to worry about.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the people who are ambivalent towards this article. Obscure languages (to us English speak’n folk) have a culture and a heritage forged by life and endurance. If he had chosen some tribal language from middle Africa, there is a heritage and a purpose that could come of that.
Klingon? There may be a culture surrounding the topic, but not the language. Nor has the language endured through hard times- except perhaps getting the speaker’s lunch money stolen and a wedgie or two.
Gamers/Scifi nuts alike need to be aware of reality vs. fiction. And we should be all the more aware of the folks who start to lose sight of reality in the favor of trying “an experiment” on a child.
Syp, thank you for posting this. I now have a purpose in life… to steal that guy’s lunch money and give him a wedgie.
This experiment wasn’t a dud. It has no scientific value whatsoever, but it does provide a note of consolation to anxious parents-to-be:
Kids aren’t as easy to screw up as you might think.
@Dril & others
So if I throw my kid down a flight of stairs and he comes out unharmed, there’s nothing wrong with that, right?
The man experimented on his own child. He COULD have scarred him for life, or at the very least stunted his development. In fact if the kid was just starting to speak at the age of 3, his probably did stunt his development some what, since most kids start to speak around 18 months.
I’m sorry but how was the child harmed? This is like saying a mother who doesnt speak english but lives in america and speaks only in her native tongue to her child is abusing it. Give me a break.
Unless you actually know the kid was harmed in some way calm the heck down.
If someone spoke mandarin for something to the child it would be more useful.
However being exposed to another language as a child is supposed to be helpful. Generally the more languages we learn the easier it is to learn a new language.
The only issue here I would say is Klingon structure and phrasing does not resemble any other language.
If you have some French, Spanish and Italian become familiar to you. Klingon does not help with any language that I have heard of.
Also its not really worth investigating as we already know that the child would learn it. Waste of time scientifically. Might get the kid a few drinks telling the story when he is older.
@Grey
That’s probably the worst comparison ever, but you know what, that stuff happens every day to kids.
But why isn’t actual physical abuse being brought up? You know, parents who put their kids in the hospital from beating them? It’s far more concerning to me than some weirdo uber nerd.
The problem is that this is being brought up on a gaming blog. I keep blogs like this on my reader because I want to read about games. Again, if this is something Syp wants to post about, that’s his choice, but it’s a bit unsettling.
Awesome.
However, no point in the experiement. You can have a pack of wild dogs raise a child, and the child will learn to crawl and bark like a dog…
You can have a child grow up in a room full of slugs, and it probably wont talk much…
Teaching a novel language to a child doesn’t bother me but this was at the expense of being able to communicate with other children/people in general. Not good for social development and ergo, mental health.
A kid who gets brought up speaking another language to that of the country they live in is irrelivant. They can still function and socialise within a community of thousands/millions, which in these days of vanishing borders (go! world) will always be present in all regions.
I think the problem is that you don’t experiment on your own kid that way. It doesn’t matter that it had no long-term effect, you do not treat your kid that way because it is very possible to screw them up.
There’s something about the pursuit of knowledge that robs people of the ability to see others as human, and not as experiments.