I'm reading this article on speech in animals, and it made an interesting claim: chimpanzees and other non-human great apes posses the anatomy needed to vocalize words, they just don't use it to do so. The article also mentions that many different species that can learn to produce a wide variety of sounds, like humans, parrots, and dolphins, all have similar activation patterns of a few genes.
It seems like, with modern genetic modification technology, we could introduce some point mutations in the chimpanzee genome for a few small things like expressing words and communicating using them. This would not change the basic level of intelligence of chimpanzees. They wouldn't be giving the rousing monologues of Cornelius from Planet of the Apes, but they'd be able to interact with society at least as well as children do. They'd be capable of basic speech, enough to communicate with each other and with humans.
My question is, how would they fit into and change society? Also equally importantly, how would society react towards them?