Bring up a chimpanzee from birth as if it were a human and it
will learn many unsimian behaviours, like wearing clothes and
even eating with a knife and fork. But one thing it will not do
is talk. In fact, it would be physically impossible for a chimp
to talk just like us, thanks to differences in our voice boxes
and nasal cavities. There are neurological differences too, some
of which are the result of changes to what has been dubbed the
"language gene". This story began with a British family that had
16 members over three generations with severe speech
difficulties. Usually speech problems are part of a broad
spectrum of learning difficulties, but the "KE" family, as they
came to be known, seemed to have deficits that were more
specific. Their speech was unintelligible and they had a hard
time understanding others' speech, particularly when it involved
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