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
2015-08-29
48
问题
Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canonized, 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 Mezzo-fantis. 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 Ar-guelles, 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.
According to the passage, it seems that
选项
A、Alexander Arguelles was too shy to talk with others in English.
B、there are many hypotheses to account for people’s language gift.
C、there is a positive correlation between language talent and introversion.
D、shy people pay more attention to reading than speaking and listening.
答案
C
解析
推断题。根据选项巾的Alexander Arguelles定位至第七段。首句指出,卓越的语言学习者更内向,之后作者举出几个实例说明该观点,[C]项是基于此句的合理推断,故为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://www.kaotiyun.com/show/kKOO777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
WhichofthefollowingisnotthebranchofAmericanFederalgovernment?
MindAgingisanewexpressioncomingintotheviewofthemodernpeople.Itissaidinastudythat54%middle-agedadultstre
SomeProblemsFacingLearnersofEnglishAlthoughmanyEnglishlearnershavegothighscoresinanEnglishtestsuchasIELTSor
A、sarcasticB、indifferentC、nocommentD、optimisticC
Itisobviousthatthereisagreatdealofdifferencebetweenbeinginternationalandbeingcosmopolitan.Allgoodmenareinte
TheheadoftherulingpartyandthatoftheOppositionpartyinBritainarecalledrespectively.
TheAustralianNationalDayischosentocommemorate
HowmanyschooldistrictsandtheNationalEducationAssociationcriticizethelaw?
Advertiserswillhaveaudienceofnearly145million【M1】______peoplefortheSuperBowlonFebruary6th,andmostconsume
随机试题
甲在其制作的玉米馒头中违规超量添加色素,销售金额累计达22万元。此种色素为合法食品添加剂,超量使用不足以造成严重食物中毒事故或者其他严重食源性疾病。甲的行为应认定为
A.大黄素B.芦荟大黄素C.大黄酸D.大黄素葡萄糖苷E.番泻苷属于二蒽酮的化合物是
某孕妇,28岁。妊娠34周,连续硬膜外麻醉下行剖宫产手术。患风湿性心脏病二尖瓣狭窄5年,患者胸闷气喘3天,胎儿取出后,突然出现胸闷、气喘症状加重,SpO2F降,心率增至150次/分,双肺底湿啰音,血气结果:PaO256mmHg,PaCO232mmHg,最可
职业安全健康管理体系的建立包括①学习与培训;②体系策划;③初始评审;④文件编写;⑤体系试运行;⑥评审完善这六个步骤,下列顺序排列正确的是______。
借款人有转移财产、抽逃资金,以逃避债务行为的,商业银行有权解除贷款合同。()
国际上出现金融危机并有可能对本国经济形成严重冲击时,政府应把()作为首选目标。
甲公司为增值税一般纳税人,主要从事不锈钢用品的生产和销售业务。2017年6月发生如下经营业务:(1)销售产品取得含增值税收入2340万元;将新研制的一批产品赠送给客户,该批产品的成本为500万元,甲公司没有同类产品的销售价格,该产品的成本利润率为10%。
根据以下资料。回答下列问题2016年,浙江省货物进出口总额22202亿元,比上年增长3.1%。其中,出口17666亿元,增长3.0%,出口占全国的12.8%,份额比上年提高0.6个百分点;进口4536亿元,增长3.7%。民营企业出口13380亿元,增
Ifitwereonlynecessarytodecidewhethertoteachelementarysciencetoeveryoneonamessbasisortofindthegiftedfewan
Ourlivesarewoventogether.AsmuchasIenjoymyown【C1】______InolongerimagineIcangetthroughasingledaycompletely【C
最新回复
(
0
)