{"id":4668,"date":"2012-03-12T20:31:36","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T02:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/?p=4668"},"modified":"2012-03-12T20:31:36","modified_gmt":"2012-03-13T02:31:36","slug":"hyperpolyglots-with-a-restless-linguistic-promiscuity-admirable-enviable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/uncategorized\/hyperpolyglots-with-a-restless-linguistic-promiscuity-admirable-enviable\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyperpolyglots with “a restless linguistic promiscuity” — admirable, enviable"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve never heard of \u201chyper\u201d-polyglots. Wondering now about hyperpolymaths and hyperpolyhistors. [hat tip to dangerousmeta<\/a>]<\/p>\n

A Teenage Master of Languages Finds Online Fellowship – NYTimes.com<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n
By JOHN LELAND<\/a><\/h6>\n
Published: March 9, 2012 <\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\n

[A] small but vibrant subculture of language geeks, one made possible only by the Internet. <\/p>\n

The linguist Michael Erard, in a recent book called \u201cBabel No More: The Search for the World\u2019s Most Extraordinary Language Learners<\/a>,\u201d describes these autodidacts as a \u201cneural tribe,\u201d joined not by common language but by a restless linguistic promiscuity. As English dominance has made it possible to navigate more and more of the world with just one language, these hyperpolyglots are no longer isolated in their passion for learning dozens or more. \u2026<\/p>\n

Do you know what ergativity is?\u201d he asked her, referring to a property of some languages, including Hindi, by which a verb\u2019s subject changes case when the verb is intransitive. [mjh: damn!] \u2026<\/p>\n

One day, discussing Turkish, he asked a visitor if he knew what an agglutinative language was. (It is a language in which new words are created by adding prefixes and suffixes.)  \u2026<\/p>\n

Hyperpolyglots have been the objects of curiosity at least since the 19th century, when Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti<\/a> of Bologna was said to have mastered more than 50 languages. For nearly as long, people have debated whether their ability was innate or learned. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A Teenage Master of Languages Finds Online Fellowship – NYTimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve never heard of \u201chyper\u201d-polyglots. Wondering now about hyperpolymaths and hyperpolyhistors. [hat tip to dangerousmeta] A Teenage Master of Languages Finds Online Fellowship – NYTimes.com By JOHN LELAND Published: March 9, 2012 [A] small but vibrant subculture of language geeks, one made possible only by the Internet. The linguist Michael Erard, in a recent book … Continue reading Hyperpolyglots with “a restless linguistic promiscuity” — admirable, enviable<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4668"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4668\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4669,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4668\/revisions\/4669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.edgewiseblog.com\/mjh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}