This is interesting:
A woman who disappeared in the jungles of north-eastern Cambodia as a child has apparently been found after living in the wild for 19 years, police said yesterday.
The woman – believed to be Rochom P’ngieng, who would now be 27 years old – cannot speak any intelligible language, so details of her story have been difficult to confirm.
There have been several accounts of feral children isolated from human contact before acquiring language skills, including Amala and Kamala, Genie, and others, but very few involving older children that have gone feral and then returned.
For babies, if they don’t get into a language environment before the ‘critical period’ (about eight or so), their prospects for language learning aren’t good. But if they hear language before then, they’re usually okay. Helen Keller is a good example; she lost her sight and hearing at nineteen months (when she’d presumably have been in the two-word stage), but recovered language ability completely with training.
That’s what I expect to happen in this case. She’s already had the wiring for syntax up until eight, so she should be able to relearn language in her home environment.
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