Babel No More (40 page)

Acknowledgments

T
he generosity of the Ralph Johnston Foundation enabled me to write and research a good portion of this book as a Dobie Paisano Writing Fellow. I am enormously grateful to the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters for their support.

Dozens of people have contributed in great and small ways to every page of this book, and I can mention only a small number
of them, though I would much prefer to invite everyone to a big party. At the top of the list are all those devoted language learners who let me into their lives and helped me understand their passion, for which I’m extremely grateful. I was also aided immeasurably throughout by the patient efforts and companionship of Richard Hudson, Loraine Obler, Susanne Reiterer, Ellen Winner, and Andrew
Cohen, and those of other experts who provided their insights into massive multilingualism, including Neil Smith, Ianthi Tsimpli, David Birdsong, Claire Kramsch, Robert DeKeyser, Arturo Hernandez, Rita Franceschini, and Stephen Krashen. To each and every expert in neuroscience, anthropology, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, American immigration, psycholinguistics, and language typology whom
I interviewed or exchanged emails with, thank you.

Loren Coleman, cryptozoologist, was a helpful early inspiration, and Ben Zimmer sent hard-to-find information about polyglots abroad. In Düsseldorf, Katrin Amunts, Karl Zilles, and Peter Sillmann were gracious
hosts at the Vogt Brain Institute. Hannes Kniffka provided early encouragement, as well as a big lunch and tour of Köln. I’m exceptionally
grateful for Franco Pasti’s tour of the University of Bologna’s library, and to Paola Foschi at the Archiginnasio. For conversations about Hippo/Lex Language Project, I would like to thank Yash Owada, Elizabeth Victor, Miguel Duran, Nayiba Thomas, Kenshi Suzuki, and Chad Nilep for their insights and, to the Salas family in Chihuahua City, their hospitality. For the India trip, I would like to
thank Sri, Kala, and all of their family members; also Zainab Bawa, Robert King, Gail Coelho, Reena Patel, Krishnamuthy Nagamangala, Joshy Eapen, and Aparna Mohan. I am grateful for the statistical expertise of Kris Arheart, James Ha, and Amanda Erard. Individuals at the Foreign Service Institute, the Defense Language Instititute, and the Center for Applied Linguistics assisted in the development
of my survey and answered related questions. Michael Adams at the University of Texas at Austin was a huge help during my stay at the Paisano Ranch.

I would also like to thank the families of Lomb Kató, Ken Hale, and Erik Gunnemark for answering questions and providing photos. Thanks to Helen Abadzi, Alexander Arguelles, and Johan Vandewalle for the permission to use photos. I also thank the
editors of
Glot
for permission to excerpt their interview with Ken Hale.

A number of early readers provided excellent feedback on portions of the manuscript; I’d like to especially thank Stephanie Bush, Jill Nilson, Colleen Moore, Lynn Davey, Cara Schlesinger, Roger Gathman, Gary and Deana Gurney, Ron Peek, Stefano Bertolo, Scott Blackwood, Neil Sattin, Deborah Snoonian Glenn, Katherine Gibbs,
and my parents, Michael and Jeanette Erard.

From its early inception, Dan Green and Simon Green of POM, Inc. were wonderful stewards of a nebulous project about polyglots, first as a magazine article and as it morphed into a book, and I am eternally grateful to David Patterson of Foundry Literary + Media who has been both the best friend and best agent a writer could hope for through all the
lives of this book. Roger Gathman supplied his innate gifts to excellent translations and brilliant editing, as did Mimi Bardagjy with thoroughness and insight into facts and typography. I also thank Pilar Archila of the University of Houston for neurological fact-checking
advice. The succinct brilliance of Hilary Redmon at Free Press transformed the manuscript several times over; her favorite
Japanese noodle shop in Manhattan is, by chance, the one that opens chapter 2. I also have to thank Sydney Tanigawa and Anne Cherry, a polyglot copyeditor, for improving the details of the story I had to tell.

I am exceptionally indebted to my wife, Misty McLaughlin. The greatest untold story about the making of this book is the deepening discovery of her companionship, support, and wisdom.

Appendix

I
n my online survey, I asked people for their top three methods of learning new languages. For simplicity, I focus here on the reports from people who said they know eleven or more languages. Some of their answers were straightforward, such as “I relax and enjoy the language; I accept mistakes and uncertainty; I listen and read a lot” or “I learn the grammar; I read; I speak.” More detailed
accounts with some interesting strategies I quote on the following pages, with the caveat that these are methods developed by highly passionate individuals to match their own cognitive styles. As one researcher told me, a method is like a medication: for some people it works; for some it has no effect; for some it’s toxic.

One person wrote in the survey that, “Rather than sheer, blind repetition,
I do consistent, continuous and regular mindful practice. I do shadowing (listening) with various audio sources and speaking. I use as many resources (paper, audio, online) as I can get my hands on and adapting them for my specific purposes. I also try to get short periods of immersion.” Someone else wrote:

In the beginning: I make hyperliteral translations of genuine written texts, using grammars, dictionaries, and “ordinary” translations. I also make three-column wordlists (target, base, target, divided into blocks of 5–7 words) and repeat them on a schedule. I also learn grammar from my own tip sheets; these include morphological points. I also write small bits about difficult points.

One of the most detailed accounts was this:

I draw mind maps of the phonological system and vocabulary roots to connect them with languages I already know. In this way I build memory anchors so that I have the ability to increase vocabulary at a very fast rate (as many as several thousand words in the first week). I also build lists of relationships between words and build working memory through organized repetitions, which is a method I’ve developed and teach. I work through conversational dialogues that cover nine major areas of everyday life: home, school, work, leisure (eating/shopping), travel, transportation, business, medical, emergency.

This comment also contained useful detail:

First I acquire a working knowledge of the structure of a language with minimum vocabulary, so that I am able to apply that structural knowledge to my own understanding and production of the language. The Michel Thomas courses are good for this, as they provide me with the structure of the language that I can immediately use. Next, I develop my passive listening skills as well as furnishing the structure I have learnt with vocabulary and idioms. This is followed by applying my new vocabulary to the previous learned structure and developing my active speaking skills. Dialogues are a good way to do this. However, they must be spoken dialogues that appear in a written form, as I have to hear the pronunciation of the words and sentences. Assimil’s method is perfect for this. Finally, I would perfect my knowledge by spending an extended period of time in a country where the language is spoken. I am therefore immersed in the language and fully develop my skills as well as building my knowledge of vocabulary and idiom.

The Assimil and Michel Thomas courses, as well as products from many other companies, can be easily found online. Other further resources with perspectives from successful language learners that I can recommend are all in English: Andrew Cohen,
Strategies in Learning and Using a Second Language
(Longman, 2011); Andrew Cohen and Ernesto Macaro (eds.),
Language Learner Strategies: Thirty Years of Research and Practice
(Oxford University Press, 2008); Earl Stevick,
Success with Foreign Languages: Seven Who Achieved It and What Worked for Them
(Prentice-Hall, 1989); and Carol Griffiths (ed.),
Lessons from Good Language Learners
(Cambridge University Press, 2008). Other books, written by polyglots themselves, will be of special interest, including: Amorey
Gethin and Erik V. Gunnemark,
The Art And Science of Learning Languages
(Intellect Books, 1996); Claude Cartaginese (ed.),
The Polyglot Project
(available online, 2010); and Brendan Lewis,
Language Hacking Guide
(available online).

Notes

PART 1 QUESTION: Into the Cardinal’s Labyrinth

Introduction

3
account of his narrow escape: Charles Russell,
The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti, with an Introductory Memoir of Eminent Linguists, Ancient and Modern
(London: Longman, Brown, and Co., 1858), 168–71.

3
“but will you tell me yourself?”: Ibid., 343.

4
fifty on display: For a full list, see Thomas Watts, “On Dr. Russell‘s
Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti
,”
Transactions of the Philological Society
(1859), 255.

4
“monster of languages”: Ibid., 228.

5
“correctness of accent that amazed me to the last degree”: Ibid, 243.

5
“not stuttering and stammering”: Ibid., 243.

5
“was a most inferior man”: Charles Lever, “Linguists,”
Blackwood’s Edinburgh,
XCVI: DLXXXV (1864), 12.

5
“‘never said anything’”: Russell,
Life
, 484.

5
Roman
priest quoted in a memoir: George Borrow,
The Romany Rye
(London: John Murray, 1857).

5
“does not seem to abound in ideas”: Russell,
Life,
345.

6
“rather of a monkey or a parrot”: Ibid., 390.

6
“He is the Devil!”: Ibid., 201.

6
“but an ill-bound dictionary”: Ibid., 395.

6
Mezzofanti could not be bested: Ibid., 314.

Chapter 1

9
the most popular language to learn: See David Graddol,
English Next
([2006]:
www.britishcouncil.org/learning-research-english-next.pdf
), 14.

9
thirty thousand companies offering English classes: Greg Dyer, “English Craze Highlights Chinese Ambitions,”
Financial Times,
Jan. 19, 2010.

9
$83 billion worldwide language-learning market: Gregory Stone, “Rosetta Stone: Speaking Wall Street’s Language,”
Time,
April 25, 2009.

9
70 percent of college students in
foreign-language classes: Modern Language Association, “Enrollments in Languages Other than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education” (Washington, DC: MLA, Fall 2009),
www.mla.org/2009_enrollmentsurvey
.

10
London . . . the most multilingual city in the world: See Andrew Buncombe and Tessa MacArthur, “London: Multilingual Capital of the World,”
www.independent.co.uk/news/london-multilingual-capital-of-the-world-1083812.html
, March 29, 1999.

11
“grasped the language’s sounds and rhythms”: Russell,
Life,
46, 158.

11
“flexibility of the organs of speech”: Ibid., 157.

11
One writer compared it to “a bird flitting from spray to spray”: Guido Görres, quoted in Ibid., 420.

13
“don’t take this claim seriously”: Carol Myers-Scotton,
Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism
(New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2006), 38.

15
“When I’m an adult”:
Daily Mail,
Oct. 29, 2007.

Chapter 2

16
puzzled the language genius by speaking to him in Ukrainian: “Russia’s Polyglot College,”
San Francisco Bulletin,
Sept. 12, 1885.

Chapter 3

27
gates to the Archiginnasio public library: Nadir Maraldi, Giovanni Mazzotti, Lucio Cocco, and Francesco A. Manzoli, “Anatomical Waxwork Modeling: The History of the Bologna Anatomy Museum,”
The Anatomical Record
(New Anat.), 26:1 (2000), 5–10.

33
the cutoff for acquiring a native-like pronunciation: See, for example, Kenneth Hyltenstam and Niclas Abrahamsson, “Who Can Become Native-like in a Second Language? All, Some, or None?”
Studia Linguistica,
54:2 (2000), 150–66.

34
–35 “a riot of linguistic variation”: Martin Maiden, “The Definition of Multilingualism in Historical Perspective,”
in A. Lepschy and A. Tosi (eds.),
Multilingualism in Italy Past and Present
(Oxford: Legenda, 2002), 29–46.