Cardinal MEZZOFANTI of Bologna was a secular saint who was said to speak 72 languages. Or 50. No one was certain of the true figure, but it was a lot. Visitors flocked from all comers of Europe to test him and came away stunned. Two condemned prisoners were due to be executed, but no one knew their language to hear their confession. Mezzofanti learned it in a night, heard their sins the next morning and saved them from hell.
Or so the legend goes. In “Babel No More”, Michael Erard has written the first serious book about the people who master vast numbers of languages—or claim to. A journalist with some linguistics training, Mr. Erard is not a hyperpolyglot himself (he speaks some Spanish and Chinese), but he approaches his topic with both wonder and a healthy dash of scepticism.
To find out whether anyone could really learn so many languages, Mr. Erard set out to find Modern Mezzofantis. The people he meets are certainly interesting. One man with a mental age of nine has a vast memory for foreign words and the use of grammatical endings, but he cannot seem to break free of English word order. Ken Hals, who was a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and died in 2001, was said to have learned 50 languages. Professional linguists sill swear by his talent. But he insisted he spoke only three (English, Spanish and Warlpiri—from Australia’s Northern Territory) and could merely “talk” in others. Mr. Erard says that true hyperpolyglottery begins at about 11 languages, and that while legends abound, tried and tested exemplars are few.
At the end of his story, however, Erard finds a surprise in Mezzofanti’s archive: flashcards. Stacks of them, in Georgian, Hungarian, Arabic, Algonquin and nine other tongues. The world’s most celebrated hyperpolyglot relied on the same tools given to first-year language learners today. The conclusion? Hyperpolyglots may begin with talent but they aren’t geniuses. They simply enjoy tasks that are drudgery to normal people. The talent and enjoyment drive a virtuous cycle that pushes them to feats others simply shake their heads at.
1.The word “hyperpolyglot” (para. 2) refers to the one who（ ）.
2.By “a healthy dash of skepticism”, the author demonstrates Mr. Erard’s（ ）.
3.Mr. Erard’s efforts to find the Modern Mezzofantis（ ）.
4.What is the emphasis in the last paragraph?
5.The passage is most likely a part of（ ）.
