Cambodian ”Jungle Girl” is Learning to Speak After 18 Years Alone in the Forest
Posted: Sunday, January 17, 2010
by Joel Kontinen
http://joelkontinen.blogspot.com/
The Phnom Pheng Post is not a newspaper I usually read but a small item in another daily aroused my interest and prompted me to take a closer view at what looked like a very unusual affair.
It seems that a female Tarzan or should I say Jane was found, not in the jungles of Africa but of Indochina.
According to the Cambodian paper, a woman who as a young girl vanished into the jungle and had lived there for 18 long years without seeing any other humans, was first seen in January 2007. She was " naked, dirty and emaciated " .
While newspapers often do a poor job of source criticism and it may be difficult to separate fact from fiction in this story, it is definitely not a run-of-the-mill affair.
The "jungle woman", who is " believed to be 28 years old ", has now learnt to understand basic Khmer. She is even able to speak a few words of the language. The doctor who has been treating her says that she " suffers from a nervous illness" but is otherwise "like a normal person".
The jungle woman's condition seems to be improving daily and she is beginning to feel at home in her new environment . " I am so happy when I see my daughter living like other women," her father said recently.
The story, if true, speaks of the amazing capacity of humans to learn a language in a surprisingly brief period of time. One might even suggest that our brains are programmed for the very task.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)And I wonder just who did that programming? Fascinating piece here. Wish we knew more about her father and family and why she left.... MarijoGood question, isn't it, Marijo?Thanks for reading,Joel
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