Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.
I've recently been enjoying Edward Rice's wonderful biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Victorian explorer, soldier, diplomat, linguist, translator, and self-described "amateur barbarian," who became one of the first non-Muslims to make the Hajj to Mecca.
Burton was a sponge for languages, and by the time of his death he was said to be fluent in 29 of them--plus at least a dozen dialects.
This got me wondering whether he might have been the most multilingual person in history.
Far from it, it seems.
Wikipedia has compiled a list of the world's most prodigious polyglots, including Sir John Bowring, who supposedly knew 200 languages (but only spoke 100), and the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak 38 tongues, despite having never left Italy.
I was led to Charles William Russel's 1863 biography of Mezzofanti, which excerpts an incredible run-in between the cardinal and Lord Byron, as described in Byron's memoirs:
I don't remember a man amongst them I ever wished to see twice, except perhaps Mezzofanti, who is a monster of languages, the Briareus of parts of speech, a walking polyglot, and more; --who ought to have existed at the time of the Tower of Babel, as universal interpreter. He is, indeed, a marvel--unassuming also. I tried him in all the tongues in which I knew a single oath or adjuration to the gods, against post-boys, savages, Tartars, boatmen, sailors, pilots, gondoliers, muleteers, camel-drivers, vetturini, post-masters, post-houses, post, everything; and egad! he astounded me--even to my English.
Russell then adds (with a note of skepticism) a postscript describing a comical swear-off between Mezzofanti and Byron:
When Byron had exhausted his vocabulary of English slang Mezzofanti quietly asked, "And is that all?"
"I can go no further," replied the noble poet, "unless I coin words for the purpose."
"Pardon me, my Lord," rejoined Mezzofanti; and proceeded to repeat for him a variety of the refinements of London slang, till then unknown to his visitor's rich vocabulary!"
What a great scene!
The Life of Cardinal Mezzofanti by Charles William Russell [HTML book]
An Introductory Memoir of Eminent Linguists, Ancient and Modern (preface to Russell's biography of Mezzofanti)
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There are gondolier-specific oaths or adjurations? I obviously need to get out more.
Now I feel really bad about never mastering Spanish in High School.
A fine and not-well-enough-known (IMO) film exists about Sir Burton:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100196/
A fine entertainment, if you can find a copy. IIRC it's been released on DVD.
We must not forget that him and his friends brought us the Kama Sutra and the Koka Shastra and a few other more difficult to find texts.
I don't think he made the Mecca trip; it was Medina.
Has the world forgotten about William James Sidis? I feel that he should be on the shortlist of names called to mind when polyglotism is called to mind. One of the pre-eminent minds ever to live, and one of the most tragic at that. He was said to be able to speak 8 languages by age 8 along with having invented his own, and in his prime was known to learn a completely new language within a single day. He was also more contemporary than many of the names on the list, so his accomplishments bear a stronger historical verification.
You don't learn that many languages, particularly in adulthood, just by trying hard in school and eating your wheaties. Some sort of atypical brain structure is clearly at work. Pity we don't know what, or how to reproduce it.
I saw Mountains of the Moon when it came out. I highly recommend reading Burton's Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah. Besides being enormously entertaining, it gives a good view of traditional Islam, before Wahhabism and confrontations with the West changed so many things.
Ken Hale was an MIT linguist (Chomsky's department) who was also a legendary polyglot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Hale
I never got to meet him (wish I had), but he was my MA supervisor's PhD supervisor - does that make him my grandsupervisor?
@Buddy66
No, Burton went to Mecca. While he was actually a convinced Muslim (among other things), that didn't stop him surreptitiously scribbling notes at some of Islam's most sacred sites.
Everything I read about "Ruffian Dick" makes me think that he must have been hell to be around, but he was an extraordinary character, one of those people who "larger than life" doesn't begin to describe.
I'll second those props for the Rice bio of Burton. Spellbinding.
Burton also wrote fifty books, traveled thousands of miles on every continent save Antarctica (I think), conducted intelligence work for the Crown that has yet to be declassified, was an expert swordsman, and made love to women of every hue in ways that most men can scarcely imagine, let alone accomplish. Otherwise, I'm sure he could have fit a few more dialects in.
Apart from Burton, do any of these hyperpolyglots ever say or write anything interesting in these many languages they speak? I mean, other than about how they speak so many languages.
@Angusm,
I misremembered, I guess. Or Fawn Brodie got it wrong.
I love the apocrypha about Mezzofanti that he was once called on to hear the confessions of two foreign criminals condemned to die the following morning. Mezzofanti learned their language (the Ket language spoken in Central Siberia) in one night and conversed with them at sunrise before their death by hanging. Believe it or not.
Two notable academic polyglots were:
Leo Strauss who was fluent in at least English, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin and possibly classical Italian among others - all in the service of producing exceptional philosophy and scholarship.
Also, J Robert Oppenheimer was known for his language abilities including Sanskrit, and IIRC, at one point, he was scheduled to deliver a talk in Hungary, and on only a week or two notice he delivered his entire lecture in fluent Hungarian and astonished the audience. He was truly a remarkable intellect.
Chomsky and Ali G http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zPHAhj_Cio
Our own Xeni Jardin is young and well on the way to hyperpolyglotty...
"Based in Los Angeles, she travels extensively, and has studied over a dozen languages including Maohi (Tahitian), QuichŽ and Kakchikel Maya (Guatemala), Nahuatl (an indigenous language of Mexico), Mandarin Chinese, and Yoruba (Nigeria)."
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/bios/jardin.html
Yeah, I read Rice's book, but didn't realize there were a few movies about Burton. Sweet!
There was an Aboriginal man in the Northern Territory of Australia who was reputedly fluent in 75 languages by the time he died (there were over 250 Aboriginal languages prior to European arrival in Australia, and most desert people and Arnhem Land people are fluent in about 3-5 languages these days).
I just bought the Burton bio - thanks for the rec!
What do you think "muleteers" were?
People with mullets?