There are cases, however, which admit of little or no hesitation.
I give a few.
One day Krall and his collaborator, Dr. Scholler, thought that
they would try and teach Mohammed to express himself in speech.
The horse, a docile and eager pupil, made touching and fruitless
efforts to reproduce human sounds. Suddenly, he stopped and, in
his strange phonetic spelling, declared, by striking his foot on
the spring-board:
"Ig hb kein gud Sdim. I have not a good voice."
Observing that he did not open his mouth, they strove to make him
understand, by the example of a dog, with pictures, and so on,
that, in order to speak, it is necessary to separate the jaws.
They next asked him:
"What must you do to speak?"
He replied, by striking with his foot:
"Open mouth."
"Why don't you open yours?"
"Weil kan nigd: because I can't."
A few days after, Zarif was asked how he talks to Mohammed.
"Mit Munt: with mouth."
"Why don't you tell me that with your mouth?"
"Weil ig kein Stim hbe: because I have no voice." Does not this
answer, as Krall remarks, allow us to suppose that he has other
means than speech of conversing with his stable-companion?
In the course of another lesson, Mohammed was shown the portrait
of a young girl whom he did not know.
"What's that?" asked his master.
"Metgen: a girl?"
On the black-board:
"Why is it a girl?"
"Weil lang Hr hd: because she has long hair.
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