首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canoni
Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canoni
admin
2012-12-30
47
问题
Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canonised, his power was close to unearthly. Mezzofanti was said to speak 72 languages. Or 50. Or to have fully mastered 30. No one was certain of the true figure, but it was a lot. Visitors flocked from all corners of Europe to test him and came away stunned. He could switch between languages with ease. 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.
Mezzofanti, for example, was a high-ranking clergyman born in 1774. In most of his interactions, he would have been the one to pick the topic of conversation, and he could rely on the same formulae he had used many times. He lived in an age when "knowing" a language more often meant reading and translating rather than speaking fluently with natives. Nonetheless, Mezzofanti clearly had speaking talent; his English accent was so good as to be almost too correct, an Irish observer noted.
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 Hale, who was a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and died in 2001, was said to have learned 50 languages, including notoriously difficult Finnish while on a flight to Helsinki. Professional linguists still 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. Ziad Fazah, raised in Lebanon and now living in Brazil, once held the Guinness world record for 58 languages. But when surprised on a Chilean television show by native speakers, he utterly flubbed questions in Finnish, Mandarin, Farsi and Russian (including "What day is it today?" in Russian), a failure that lives in infamy on YouTube. Perhaps he was a fraud; perhaps he simply had a miserable day. Hyperpolyglots must warm up or "prime" their weaker languages, with a few hours’ or days’ practice, to use them comfortably. Switching quickly between more than around six or seven is near-impossible even for the most gifted.
Does that mean they don’t really know them? Is instant availability of native-like competence the only standard for "knowing" a language? How should partly knowing a tongue be tallied? What if you can only read in it? Mr. Erard repeatedly peppers his text with such questions, feeling his way through his story as a thoughtful observer, rather than banging about like an academic with a theory to defend or a pitchman with a technique to sell.
Hyperpolyglots are more likely to be introverted than extroverted, which may come as a surprise to some. Hale’s son always said that, in his father’s case, languages were a cloak for a shy man. Another, Alexander Arguelles, has learned dozens of languages only to read them, saying "It’s rare that you have an interesting conversation in English. Why do I think it would be any better in another language?" Emil Krebs, an early-20th-century German diplomat who was also credited with knowing dozens of languages, was boorish in all of them. He once refused to speak to his wife for several months because she told him to put on a winter coat. Different hypotheses may explain part of the language-learner’s gift. Some hyperpolyglots seem near-autistic.
At the end of his story, however, he 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, admiration mixed with no small amount of incomprehension.
In "Babel No More", Michael Erard’s attitude towards multilingual people can be best described as
选项
A、inquiring.
B、skeptical.
C、paradoxical.
D、blended.
答案
D
解析
态度题。由题干中的“Babel No More”定位至第二段。末句指出“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.”,可见他在写书时既有好奇心又抱有正面的怀疑态度,因此blended(混合的)符合文意,故[D]为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/RtaO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Therearetwosortsofpeopleintheworld,whowithequaldegreesofhealth,andwealth,andtheothercomfortsoflife,become
TheEffectivenessofaPerson1.believethereisnosuchthingas(1),【1】______sothesolutionis(2)whenitisoptimumor
WhenIdecidedtoquitmyfull.timeemploymentitneveroccurredtomethatImightbecomeapartofanewinternationaltrend.
A、CheneyandKerryB、BushandKerryC、CheneyandtheheadofDemocraticPartyD、TheheadsofDemocraticandRepublicpartiesC
Areferenceinaliteraryworktoaperson,aplaceorathinginhistoryoranotherworkofliteraryisan______.
Youshouldnotfearspidersthankstotheirpoison.Ofallthespidersin【M1】______NorthAmerica,onlyonekindisreallyda
Youshouldnotfearspidersthankstotheirpoison.Ofallthespidersin【M1】______NorthAmerica,onlyonekindisreallyda
Meteorologistsroutinelytelluswhatnextweek’sweatherislikelytohe,andclimatescientistsdiscusswhatmighthappenin1
HowtoReadEffectivelyManystudentstendtoreadbookswithoutanypurpose.Theyoftenreadabookslowlyandingreatdeta
Who’stoblamefortheapproximately$2agallonmostAmericanspaidforgasolineontheirThanksgivingDaytravels?Toquote
随机试题
Jackisn’tgoodenough______figure,buthisoutstandingskillcompensatesforit.
患者女性,25岁。发现尿毒症2年,未进行系统治疗,2d前突然出现恶心、呕吐,神志淡漠,急检血气分析示:pH:7.20,实际碳酸氢盐为12mmol/L,此时应
A.偶氮偶联法B.酸碱指示剂法C.葡萄糖氧化酶法D.四甲替联苯胺法E.特异性酯酶法尿干化学Hb测定用
建筑内钢结构在高温条件下存在强度降低和蠕变现象,极易失去承载力。钢结构构件的防火保护措施主要有两种:其一采用砖石等无机耐火材料包覆;其二采用钢结构防火涂料。下列对建筑物钢结构防火检查要求中不正确的是()。
社会审计组织在办理审计机关的委托审计事项时,其审计结果()。
(2013年)2006年6月,梁某因交通肇事罪被判入狱服刑4年。2011年11月,因虚开普通发票罹被判处有期徒刑4年。下列有关梁某的刑罚适用及执行的说法中,正确的有()。
亮亮(10岁)在父母离婚后,跟随母亲一起生活,其父对亮亮可以不用尽教育义务。()
我国确认发明专利权的第一审行政案件应当由:
2009年1─10月份我国商品房销售面积总计66368.73万平方米,同比增长48.4%,总销售额为31529.12亿元,同比增长79.2%。分地区看,东部地区商品房销售面积为35190.87万平方米,同比增长56.3%,商品房销售额为21789
Thehealth-careeconomyisfilledwithunusualandevenuniqueeconomicrelationships.Oneoftheleastunderstoodinvolvesthe
最新回复
(
0
)