"Cloister, Glasgow University" by _skynet

I’m entirely uncertain when I first recognized in myself independent use of symbols and language.  It was, with some likelihood, when I was around the age of three, as I do vaguely recall sitting on my dad’s lap, reading a book that had something to do with trains.  In this book, certain words were replaced with a series of symbols, and when those symbols were encountered, my father would look to me in anticipation to fill in those voids.  For example, on the page, in the middle of a normal, English sentence, would be three identical drawings of a bell.  This indicated that it was my turn to make a dinging noise, furthering the story along.

Why is this significant?  Because it’s the first cognitive memory I have of associating the symbol (a bell), with a sound (dinging), with a word (“bell”).  I had built the association between a symbol and an object, and I knew when I saw that symbol I was supposed to make the noise associated with that object.  It was a sort of epiphany.  It was the moment where language became a tool I could use to communicate ideas meaningfully, because it now had meaning to me.

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