We often see that some people can speak one or even several foreign languages fluently, but they find it difficult to recite a few new words. Now, the authoritative scientific magazine New Scientist reports that some people can speak 76 languages, and some even know hundreds of languages. Is there really a so-called language genius?

The story begins with an email.

This email begins like this: "Sir, first of all, please forgive me for bothering you, but I have to write to you after reading your article."

Then, the author of this letter tells the story of his grandfather, sicilian, who has never been to school, but he obviously has a gift for learning languages. Although he has no chance to receive education, he can speak 70 languages and read and write 56 of them. In order to protect the privacy of the email author, let's call him n.

This Yi Meier was sent to Dick Hudson, a retired professor of linguistics at University College London, from June 5th to 10, 2003.

1996, Hudson posted on the most popular "linguist" online forum among linguists, asking who has the most kinds of languages. In the following posts, some celebrities who know many languages are listed. For example, Italian cardinal Giuseppe Usep in18th century can speak 72 languages, and can speak 39 of them fluently. Vernon walters, an American intelligence officer who died in 2002, spoke eight languages.

According to N, his grandfather moved to new york in 19 10, where he got a job as a railway baggage porter, which gave him the opportunity to meet passengers who spoke different languages. N said that he once witnessed his grandfather translate a newspaper into three languages.

1950, when N 10 was old, he accompanied his grandfather on a six-month trip around the world. N said that no matter which port they docked at, his grandfather would speak the local language. They passed Venezuela, Argentina, Norway, Britain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Africa, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan. Assuming that what N said is true, then this grandfather can speak at least 15 languages.

Even more surprising, N claimed that this ability can be passed down in his family. He wrote in the letter: "Every three or four generations, a child in our family has the talent to learn many languages. His grandfather once told him that his great-grandfather and his great-grandfather could speak almost 100 languages. "

When reading this email, Hudson immediately realized that he might include the person mentioned by N in his list of linguists.

Hudson called those who knew six or more languages "linguistic geniuses". He chose "6" because he knew that many people in the world could speak five languages.

Congenital or acquired?

Language is considered as a part of human's unique cognitive ability. But until today, scientists still don't know how many languages a person can master at most.

Do geniuses who can speak six or more languages have unusual brains? If so, what makes their brains so special? Or are they just ordinary people with ordinary minds, just because of interest and hard work?

Hudson's research motivation is simple: if we can understand how language geniuses acquire this extraordinary ability, it may help ordinary people learn more languages. Hudson's research attracted the attention of American intelligence agencies. They have a problem called "translation distance". If they can't translate some important documents in time, they may not be able to stop terrorist attacks.

Until now, anecdotes about language genius are still more legends than scientific evidence.

For example, Charles Russell, an Irish church historian at St Patrick's College, is the biographer of Usep Mezofanti. He claims that Usep Mezofanti can speak 72 languages and can speak 39 of them fluently. After Hudson sent this email to the forum, many people began to discuss it.

Robert johnson, a man from Texas, questioned Mezzofanti's statement. He wrote: Assuming that there are only 20,000 words in each language (in fact, this estimate is too small), then, according to 72 languages, Mezofanti does not eat or drink 12 hours a day, and must remember one word every minute for 5.5 years. "Is this possible?" Johnson asked.

Professional linguists are also divided on this. Philipp Hedina, a linguist at Innsbruck University in Austria, believes that maintaining this ability will take up resources from other brain activities. Philip Hedina's research focuses on people with different language talents. These people are proficient in one or three foreign languages. This ability is usually considered special, because once a person reaches puberty, language learning usually becomes more difficult.

Some linguists believe that it is not surprising that a person can master many languages. Susan Frey, a bilingual and trilingual expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "There is really no limit to the ability of anthropology to learn a language except that there is not enough time in a certain language environment. The more languages you master, the easier it is to learn new languages. "

Steven Punk, a psycholinguist at Harvard University, agrees with Frye. When asked why some people can't learn more than a dozen languages, Steven Punk replied: "The ultimate interference, that is, similar knowledge can interfere with each other."

But if Susan Frey and Steven Punk are right and the ability to learn multiple languages is average, then why are so few people developed it?

Stephen Klasing, a professor of education and linguistics at UCLA, believes that people who learn additional languages are not only diligent, but also know better how to learn. He cited the example of Hungarian translator Lom Carter during the Cold War.

Lome Carter studied German in primary school. 1996, when Dancla Xin met Lome Carter in Budapest, the 86-year-old man could speak 17 languages, including Chinese, Russian and Latin, and was learning Hebrew. Lom said that he had no special talent for languages. She took training courses in Chinese and Portuguese, but other languages were acquired by reading foreign novels with the help of dictionaries.

intelligence

However, other researchers emphasize that the brain plays a more critical role in learning a language well.

In the late1980s, a neurolinguist named Loraine Obler from City University of new york discovered a talented language learner, whom she called CJ.

This man is 29 years old and is studying for a master's degree at Harvard University. He grew up in a monolingual environment. In high school, he studied French, German, Spanish and Latin. After graduating from college, he went to work in Morocco and learned Arabic.

People usually think that people who master many languages must be particularly smart, but CJ's IQ is 105, which basically belongs to medium intelligence. When he was a child, he studied slowly and went to an ordinary school. However, in the language intelligence test, CJ scored particularly high. He has a good memory for words. He can remember some sentences and phrases for a week, but he forgets numbers and pictures as fast as others.

Another study believes that CJ is born with a brain that is biased towards learning languages, but he is not excellent in other aspects. CJ said that he had difficulty in reading maps and finding his way. Obr believes that some people have defects in one aspect, and accordingly, these people may have talents in music, art or mathematics, and this ability may also extend to language. This seems to show that CJ's language talent is innate.

CJ has an identical twin brother, but he has no obvious language talent. These characteristics of CJ coincide with a hypothesis put forward by Eta Schneiderman, a linguist at the University of Ottawa, in 1980. This hypothesis holds that people who can speak several new foreign languages as fluently as their mother tongue in adulthood are usually weak in visual space skills.

Family inheritance

In 2004, a research team led by neuroscientist cathleen Amunts of Munich Research Center published a detailed report on the study of multilingual gifted brains. Amuz and her team examined the brain of the German giant Emil Krebs, who is now preserved. This man used to be an interpreter for the German ambassador to China. It is said that he was proficient in 60 languages before his death in 1930.

The researchers found that the Blacas area of Kribusz, a brain area related to language, is as big as 1 1 monolingual.

However, was he born with such a brain? Or is it because he studied language hard the day after tomorrow and "shaped" his brain like this? Scientists have not found the answer yet, but they all agree that language ability is related to heredity.

The evidence that multilingual talent can be inherited in families supports the view that linguistic talent can be inherited.

Since1990s, scientists have started to associate language defects with gene composition. 1990, scientists found that due to the location of a gene named FoxP2, a Ke family could not produce specific grammatical expression ability. In 200 1 year, scientists discovered a special genetic variation.

However, when variation shows extraordinary language talent, this situation is not morbid.

It is difficult for scientists to persuade such families to participate in their genetic experiments, perhaps because these talented people do not need medical treatment. Linguists exchanged several emails with the mysterious Mr. n. Finally, the reply stopped. N said that he had discussed this issue with his family and they didn't want to be interviewed.

Before stopping communication, n also revealed some details about his grandfather. He said, "Before we arrived in Thailand, I was sure he didn't speak Thai at all." However, two weeks later, his grandfather actually quarreled with the vendors in the market in Thai.