Babel No More

the curse of Babel

provide a glimpse into what the human brain is capable of

If language had evolved solely for communication, we’d rarely misunderstand each other. Instead, we have a system in which words mean more than one thing, in which one can devise many sentences to capture the same idea, in which one moment of silence means more than a thousand pictures.

“It’s not a genetic predisposition,” he said. “It’s an economic predisposition. If you don’t speak, you don’t eat. It’s as simple as that.”

One metaphor for Hinduism that seemed to capture this quality comes from religion scholar Wendy Doniger, who called it “one house with many mansions,” which also captures the linguistic life of the south Indians I met. In the West, a person with multiple identities and affiliations seems obliged to struggle or feel confusion. Here, the more the merrier.

I appreciated him more for his seasoned dismissal of a unified thing called “English.” That sensibility about language would prove valuable.

What is surprising is that what one remembers doesn’t decline steadily over a lifetime. Rather, what you remembered after three to six years would stay with you for decades.

The enemy of the language learner is forgetting. You can only prevent this by regularly studying. It’s not revolutionary.”
Another key asset for the hyperpolyglot, from Mezzofanti to Abadzi, is an ability to monitor what they say before it comes out of their mouths.

learns grammar from language, not language from grammar,” she writes. One can almost hear the thousands of language teachers gnashing their teeth in Hungary’s direction.

If a Norwegian claims to be able to speak seven languages, six of them are Norwegian.