Jean-Francois Champollion

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 5:19 am

Jean was a language genius of mammoth proportions. The 19th century seems to have been full of such men.

By the age of 20 he could speak Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Amharic, Sanskrit, Avestan, Pahlavi, Arabic, Syriac, Chaldean, Persian, Chinese and of course, French. (Typical of a Frenchman not to include English!)

Look him up on Wikipedia if you don't believe me!

Actually, I am quite sure this is impossible. Unless, that is, "speaking" a language means memorizing the phrases "Hello", "What is your name" and "I am a boasting, pretentious little twit".

All right, he translated the Rosetta Stone and all, but even so.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 6:48 am

I've heard that he was pretty handy with a needle and thread, and could sow black buttons onto a pair of socks in record speed, fashioning "rough and ready" button-eyed hand puppets that smelled like cheesy feet with which he could then recreate conversations (he was apparently also a mean ventriloquist) as he imagined they might go in those long-dead languages.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 11:40 pm

Just in case that kills the thread.......

My point is - there are lots of people of whom it is said that they speak umpteen languages. Usually they lived a long time ago. Do you believe it?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Fri Nov 26, 2004 11:57 pm

Me, kill a thread?! Never!

(there's no angel emoticon, you see).

Actually, I knew that was the point you were trying to make.

Hmm, all I can say is, education in the classics ("Classics") isn't quite what it used to be*, even if we suspect that these legendary scholars everybody thinks can never be surpassed weren't actually able to speak the languages they knew in any "living", complete and consistently meaningful sense.

Perhaps saying that they "knew" (academically) rather than "spoke" many languages would be a more apt way to describe it (then, as well as today still)? What I'm saying is, to really be in any position to answer your question, we'd have to study the classics ourselves to quite a high level, wouldn't we?

* Not that there aren't experts anymore; rather, I mean not many people want to study them now or consider them a hallmark of greater intelligence or learning.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 12:27 am

It isn't just a matter of ancient language scholarship. You hear of people who are supposed to be able to instantly switch into chatting in all manner of languages. I have heard ridiculous numbers bounced around, including 200 for some long dead Persian bloke, as I recall.

Everything I have learnt from teaching and studying languages, especially when going outside of your own native language family-group and culture, leads me to believe that learning them entails a very long period of hard work, however bright you are. To maintain them at conversational level takes a lot of work too. I couldn't imagine above 10 is possible, (unless some of them are very much dialects with an army, like Portuguese/Spanish).

I can't find anything in the Guiness book of records about this.

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 12:38 am

I'd agree that most polyglots know only closely-related languages or dialects. But the multilingual and multicultural environments in which these people grow up must make it easier for them to pick up further languages than us mainly monolingual (monocultural?) Brits suspect is possible, especially when they (as is often the case due to the spread of English and other languages throughout history) have had exposure to even only one or two more exotic tongues outside their immediate language family.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 12:48 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingual

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:01 am

Nice link, but most of the figures (numbers) quoted are approximate and often clearly hearsay, which kind of brings us back to woodcutter's original question(s). Or maybe we are probably all just secretly jealous of those clever b*stards and would prefer to believe it is impossible.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:03 am

Thanks Andy.

Champollion was a let down then. Never did a stroke after he left school!

I like that "reported to know" 55 languages. The guy had a sore throat when the man from the Guiness book came round I suppose.

Could this be a case of all things on Wikipedia being only reportedly true?

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:14 am

woodcutter wrote:I like that "reported to know" 55 languages. The guy had a sore throat when the man from the Guiness book came round I suppose.

Must've been a real let-down not only for the guy from Guiness, but also for the 55+ native speakers who were with him.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:24 am

It also says William James Sidis was able to learn a language in a day. Is this possible even if one remembers absolutely everything instantly?

I think as language teaching professionals we have a duty to dispel such nonsense. I have a mind to edit that article!

fluffyhamster · Post by **fluffyhamster** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 1:31 am

Whoa, easy there, wooden tiger! Whilst what you'd be editing is perhaps absolute nonsense (how was such a "socially inept", possibly "autistic" subject's knowledge ever tested?), the "fact" that somebody somewhere believed (knew?) WJS "could" learn a language in a day is, um, well, a fact, man! (Big Lebowski-like flourish).