杏吧原创

Can you give me a potted history of your language journey?

I鈥檇 learned French, German, Spanish, Latin, Greek and Sanskrit by the end of college. In graduate school, I added medieval literary languages such as Old Norse, Old French and Middle High German. Then, living in Berlin, I added more medieval Germanic dialects, Dutch and a bit of Frisian, Swedish and other Scandinavian languages, as well as Italian, Portuguese, Occitan and Catalan. After that, during an intensive 10-year 鈥渕onastic鈥� period in Korea, I learned Korean, Japanese, Mandarin and Classical Chinese, but also Russian, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Turkish, Swahili, Irish Gaelic, Modern Greek and most of the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages.

I know you don鈥檛 like being asked how many languages you speak, but I鈥檓 afraid I have to鈥�

I don鈥檛 count; it鈥檚 very hard to say. Some languages are so close to each other it feels like cheating to count them separately. And what about my dead languages? Altogether I鈥檝e studied maybe 60 or 70.

Where did your love of languages come from?

I was raised a monoglot but and I travelled around a lot as a child. Then there was my maternal grandmother. She was a German immigrant鈥檚 daughter in the Midwestern US, so she grew up bilingual in English and German, and somehow she fell in love with Spanish. So she taught herself Spanish as a young girl, then Portuguese. She became a professional translator and interpreter of four languages. I always knew I was destined to be a polyglot.

How do you motivate yourself to keep learning?

I approach polyglottery as a sport, as athleticism, mental exercise. Playing games is fun, right? There are many things out there that can make you happy but, take it from me, the most fun thing in the world is autodidactic learning.

Do you find at all that languages interfere with one another when you are learning them?

Absolutely not. When I am speaking one of my weaker languages, a stronger relative may sometimes jump in with vocabulary or structure, but that is more assistance than interference. However, when I was in my intensive learning phase and studying dozens of languages simultaneously, they never interfered with each other.

So your brain doesn鈥檛 feel full?

I don鈥檛 think the human brain can get full like we鈥檇 say 鈥渢his box is full鈥�. The problem is there are only so many hours in a day. Give me total freedom of time like I had during my intensive learning years, and I could conceivably do 100 languages. But these days that wouldn鈥檛 fulfil me as much as getting to read the literature of these many cultures. I want to take languages that have richer cultural literatures and really develop my knowledge of those. The brain is not full but the clock is full.

What drives you to learn new languages?

I think when most people hear an unknown language, their reaction is 鈥渙h, it鈥檚 foreign, I don鈥檛 understand it鈥�, and then they shut it off. It becomes background noise. I hear it and think 鈥� what鈥檚 that, I want to identify it at least. It鈥檚 irritating to me if I can鈥檛 figure out what language the sound 鈥� or shape if you鈥檙e talking about script 鈥� belongs to. It鈥檚 basic curiosity.

Tell me about your key technique for learning a new language, and how it works

I call it shadowing. I shadow the audio of the target language by listening to it through earphones and speaking along with it as simultaneously as I possibly can. I鈥檝e found the best way to do this is while walking outdoors as swiftly as possible, maintaining a perfectly upright posture and speaking loudly. My students find it a challenging form to learn, but I have found it to be very effective. It helps me to internalise, and in the end memorise, a representative chunk of the language. That鈥檚 a firm start. Of course, much study follows.

It鈥檚 said that people adopt cultural stereotypes when speaking a foreign language. Do you feel more romantic when speaking Portuguese?

No, I don鈥檛.

But do thought patterns change with language?

While I don鈥檛 agree that you have a different personality when using different languages, it鈥檚 true that the structure of your thought sometimes has to be different. Because in Korean, for example, you don鈥檛 conjugate verbs according to person at all, but rather according to a wide variety of different 鈥渞espect鈥� levels that have to do with age, the nature of your relationship to the person you鈥檙e speaking with, and so on. Behind it all is a Confucian concept that if someone is six months older or younger than you, they have to be addressed differently than if they are the same age as you.

Do you cherry-pick favourite expressions?

Not consciously. Maybe it鈥檚 because I spent last summer in St Petersburg, Russia, but these days, if I like something, I say 鈥�eto khorosho鈥� 鈥� that鈥檚 good, that鈥檚 nice. When I lived in Germany I made a conscious effort to block English, to switch my whole mental operating system over to German. After that, in Korea, I still automatically thought in German and I still often do. I curse in German. Scheisse.

People say German language structure is more precise. Does that make you less likely to blather on, like we do in English?

You can blather on in German! Your brain just functions in a different fashion: the verb鈥檚 going to come at the end and that鈥檚 that.

Has being a hyperpolyglot given you any insight into there being an overarching language of thought, a mentalese?

I do believe there is a mentalese. Sometimes I prohibit my mind from accessing other languages, to force it to stay in one, and under those circumstances my thought process will not stop when I don鈥檛 know a word, the way it would if I were conversing, but rather will only pause and then register the concept namelessly in mentalese before moving on.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think the human brain can get full like we鈥檇 say 鈥榯his box is full鈥欌��

Do you have any language ambitions left?

I鈥檝e put a moratorium on new languages, because I鈥檝e studied too many to take them all to a high level. So at this stage I鈥檓 trying to get to a higher level with Arabic and Russian, and in my reading of a few others. I consciously aborted Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and Swahili, all of which I studied to a very high degree. I have a peek every now and then to make sure there鈥檚 something still there, and there always is. Then there鈥檚 another set of languages that I didn鈥檛 consciously abort, but which I鈥檓 not getting to spend any time with. So if I had an ambition it鈥檚 not to learn Tibetan or Quechua, but to get my Persian or Hindi back.

Are there subsets of polyglots who want to become obscurists?

Yes. As the polyglot community grows, people want to stand out, so they take on novel challenges. The ultimate would be to learn a non-scripted language that no anthropologist has studied. On one hand, you would have no grammar, but on the other hand if you have a knack for it, if the native speakers accept you, you could go and live with them and it would be sink or swim.

Are your kids following in your footsteps?

Yes, they鈥檙e having a different experience to me. I speak French all the time with my sons, and I鈥檓 teaching them Latin, German, Spanish and Russian. I love my father very much, and he never encouraged me nor forced me to learn languages. I鈥檓 not that kind of father.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淵ou had me at hall氓鈥�