语言的天赋

The gift of tongues.

语言的天赋。

What makes some people learn language after language?

何者吸引一些人接二连三地学习多门语言?

Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners.

消逝的巴别塔：寻找世间最卓越的语言学习者。

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.

博洛尼亚的Mezzofanti红衣主教是一个身处于俗世的圣人。尽管他从未演示过任何奇迹而被正式册封为圣徒，其能力也近乎超自然了。据说Mezzofanti可以说72抑或50种语言，若说精通则是30种。对此，没人能说得准，但总之很多。成群结队从欧洲各地赶来验证他能力的游客都带着瞠目结舌的神情离去。他可以轻松地任意在几种语言之间切换。曾有两个被定罪的囚犯即将行刑，却因说一口无人知晓的语言使得最后的忏悔无人听得懂。Mezzofanti用一夜学会了这种语言，并于隔天早晨倾听了他们的罪孽，救赎了他们的灵魂以免于沦落地狱。

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.

如此这般，传言之谓。《消逝的巴别塔》是Michael Erard所写的有关于精通或声称自己精通许多种语言之人的第一本严肃书籍。Erard先生虽是个受过些许语言学训练的记者，但却并没有通晓超多种语言的特殊能力（他能说一点西班牙语和中文），不过他在处理论题时，即带着惊奇艳羡，又带着几许健康的怀疑态度。

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.

如Mezzsfanti生于1774年，曾是高级神职人员。多数情况下，他可能正是在与人交流中掌握选择话题主动权的人，如此，他便能够仰仗用过许多次的同一种模式交谈了。他所生活的年代对于“知晓”一种语言的理解更多的是指能读能译而非能够流利地与母语使用者交流。尽管如此，Mezzofanti显然还是拥有语言天赋的：一个爱尔兰目击者指出，他的英语口音好到几乎过了头。

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.

为了弄清是否真有人能够学如此多的语言，Erard先生启程去寻找现代的“Mezzofantis”。他果真遇到了有趣之人。一个心理年龄仅9岁的男子拥有大量关于外语单词和词尾的记忆，但似乎不能打破英语词序的思维定式。另据说Ken Hale，这位于2011年去世的麻省理工学院的语言学家，生前学习了50种语言，甚至在一架飞往赫尔辛基的航班上学会被公认极难的芬兰语。语言专家们至今仍对他的天赋确信无疑。而他本人确坚称自己只会三门语言（英语，西班牙语和沃匹利语——来自于澳洲北领地），而对于其它语言，聊聊尚可。