The confusion of languages at Babel Tower is a bible story that everybody knows. Basically, Babylonians built an extremely high tower which served as visible from a long distance landmark, or in other words, an external point of reference for nomadic troopers and navigators. Since the tower helped people to find their way back or through the terrain it was a deal breaker for god who wanted people to be scattered all over the world, and not gathered in one city or a place. To avoid this problem in the future, god confused builders languages (source: https://bible.org/book/export/html/4838).Maybe if Babylonians hadn’t bragged so much about the tower, they wouldn’t have drawn god’s attention to it. Who knows?
As history shows, people’s swiftness and agility in terms of walking the problems around are just stunning. As a consequence, we learn other languages to communicate with vast number of foreigners. Today it’s quite normal that most of us are bilingual or even trilingual, but still there are some people who can astonish us with a good knowledge of ten, twenty or even more foreign languages. Those linguistic heroes are called Hyperpolyglots. Most of them speak up to ten languages fluently and have a good grasp of several other ones.
Dr. Kató Lomb was a Hungarian interpreter who made a living from 16 languages: Bulgarian; Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish and Ukrainian. She said that „we should study languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.” I hope that you also feel that even a pinch will open the culture doors which would otherwise be closed.
For 22 years old Britain’s most multilingual student Alex Rawlings 11 languages are not a mystery doors any longer. He runs a blog where he explains his interest in learning languages and the methods he uses during the whole process. You can also see how Alex Rawlings demonstrates his 11 languages on BBC: How do you become fluent in 11 languages?
Even more gifted in language accumulating occurred to be Grzegorz Pisarski from Wrocław who speaks 35 languages, in that 20 fluently. Mr. Pisarski advocates that „the best way to learn a language is through conversation and no dictionary can replace a discussion with other man”. This is why, he recently provides German lesson for his friend Harish Batra, who speaks 5 languages, in exchange for Hindi lessons.
Another hyperpolyglot who knows an incredible number of over 30 languages is Emanuele Marini from Italy who went down like a bomb during The first Polyglot Conference in Budapest, 18th of May 2013. Thanks to the main organizers, who also happen to be hyperpolyglots, Richard Simcott and Luca Lampariello the phenomenon of multilingualism is popularized over the world. Hopefully, we will be able to watch, or in some cases participate in, the annual gathering which will explore the upper limits of human potential. The next Polyglot Conference is going to be held in the second largest city of Serbia – Novi Sad on 10-12 October 2014.
Lacking motivation and inspiration for learning another languages? I found something that surely unstock you – a well written, unbelievably detailed, over 500 pages book which ignites a fire of curiosity. 43 authors who contributed to: „Polyglot Project: The Absolute Best Way to Learn Languages” describe their personal experiences, techniques and methods in multiple language learning. Exceptionally entertaining and absorbing work. Take a look on:
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