What do you call a person who knows many languages ​​(or is just very smart)? and got the best answer

Answer from OLKA[guru]
many languages ​​- polyglot!

Answer from 2 answers[guru]

Hello! Here is a selection of topics with answers to your question: what do you call a person who knows many languages ​​(or is simply very smart)?

Answer from Equip[guru]
quick wit
ingenuity
resourcefulness

Answer from Sowing[guru]
actually there are a lot of synonymous words in this context...
polyglot
connoisseur
intellectual
smart ass
and so on.
he, showing miracles of intellect
knowledge
- you can write
the rest has already been written above

Answer from Fed up[guru]
If I'm not mistaken, then a person who knows many languages ​​is called a polyglot, or maybe it's not from that opera anyway, but just very smart - a child prodigy, a genius, etc., etc.

Answer from fatty[guru]
A polyglot (from the Greek poly “many” and glotta “language”) is a person who speaks many languages.
The most outstanding polyglot is considered to be the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti (1774-1849), who never left Italy, but was fluent in 38 languages ​​and fluent in another 30 languages; in addition, he knew 50 dialects of various languages.
Polyglots also include Antony Grabowski, orientalist Arminius Vamberi, writer, poet and revolutionary Jose Rizal, creator of Esperanto Ludwik Zamenhof, archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, Pope John Paul II.

On October 7, the outstanding linguist, semiotician, and anthropologist Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov passed away

Photo: Rodrigo Fernandez Wikipedia

IN Yacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov is a truly legendary figure. He belonged to that rare type of scientists today who can confidently be called encyclopedists. Few can compare with him in the scope of cultures, in the variety of interdisciplinary connections identified in his semiotic and cultural studies. It is difficult to name a humanities science to which he did not make some contribution. He is the author of more than one and a half dozen books and more than 1,200 articles on linguistics, literary criticism and a number of related humanities, many of which have been translated into Western and Eastern languages.

Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich was born on August 21, 1929 in Moscow in the family of the writer Vsevolod Ivanov, a man with a wide range of interests, a connoisseur of poetry and oriental cultures, a bibliophile who paid great attention to the comprehensive education of his son. Already in our time, Vyacheslav Ivanov recalled: “I was lucky, simply because of my family, because of my parents and their friends, to be in the circle of many remarkable people since childhood,” who had a significant influence on the development of the young man. It is no coincidence that a significant part of his scientific research is devoted to people whom he knew since childhood.

He constantly turned to Russian literature of the 20th century, with which, so to speak, he was connected by family ties. He is occupied by the relationship between poetic manifestos and the artistic practice of representatives of the Russian literary avant-garde, parallels and connections between writers who remained in Russia and writers of the Russian diaspora. Ivanov is particularly interested in the biography of Maxim Gorky, whom he knew as a child and saw more than once. In his historical essays, Ivanov seeks to understand the history of relations between writers and authorities during the Soviet period. He was interested in unofficial literature of the Stalin era, the last years of Gorky's life and the circumstances of his death, and the relationship between Stalin and Eisenstein.

Cuneiform and semiotics

In 1946, after graduating from school, Ivanov entered the Romance-Germanic department of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, from which he graduated in 1951.

And already in 1955, Ivanov defended his thesis on the topic “Indo-European roots in the cuneiform Hittite language and the features of their structure,” which made such an impression on the academic council of Moscow State University that he considered the dissertation worthy of a doctorate - this happens in mathematics, but is extremely rare happens in the humanities. However, the Higher Attestation Commission did not approve the doctoral degree under a far-fetched pretext. And the new defense was hampered due to Ivanov’s participation in human rights activities. Only in 1978 did he manage to defend his doctorate at Vilnius University.

After completing his graduate studies, Ivanov was retained at the department at Moscow State University, where he taught ancient languages ​​and taught courses in comparative historical linguistics and introduction to linguistics. But the scope of a traditional academic career was narrow for him. In 1956–1958, Ivanov, together with the linguist Kuznetsov and the mathematician Uspensky, led a seminar on the application of mathematical methods in linguistics. In fact, he stood at the origins of a new discipline that arose in those years - mathematical linguistics, to which he later devoted many of his works.

And then he showed his stormy social temperament, expressing disagreement with

Ivanov, together with the linguist Kuznetsov and the mathematician Uspensky, led a seminar on the application of mathematical methods in linguistics. In fact, he stood at the origins of a new discipline that arose in those years - mathematical linguistics

By attacking Boris Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago” and supporting the scientific views of Roman Yakobson. And for this in 1959 he was fired from Moscow State University. This decision was officially canceled by the university leadership only in 1989.

So that today’s reader can appreciate the courage of Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich’s behavior, we note that in those years he, apparently, was almost the only one who allowed himself to openly express his disagreement with the defamation of Pasternak.

But the dismissal, in a certain sense, played a positive role both in the fate of Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich and in the fate of science. Ivanov headed the machine translation group at the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Computer Science of the USSR Academy of Sciences. And then he became the creator and first chairman of the linguistic section of the Scientific Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences on cybernetics, headed by academician Axel Ivanovich Berg. Ivanov’s participation in the preparation of the problem note “Issues of Soviet science. General Issues of Cybernetics" under the leadership of Berg played a big role in the history of Russian science. Based on the proposals contained in this note, the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences adopted a resolution on May 6, 1960 “On the development of structural and mathematical methods of language research.” Thanks to this, numerous machine translation laboratories, sectors of structural linguistics and structural typology of languages ​​in academic institutions, departments of mathematical, structural and applied linguistics in several universities in the country were created. Ivanov participated in the preparation of curricula and programs for the department of structural and applied linguistics of the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University, and in 1961 he gave a plenary report on mathematical linguistics at the All-Union Mathematical Congress in Leningrad.

He played an extremely important role in the development of domestic and world semiotics.

The works of Vyacheslav Ivanov on the subject of semiotics laid the general ideological basis for semiotic research in the USSR and the world-famous Moscow-Tartu semiotic school

Symposium on the structural study of sign systems, organized by the Scientific Council of the USSR Academy of Sciences on Cybernetics. The preface to the abstracts of the symposium written by Ivanov actually became a manifesto of semiotics as a science. Many experts believe that the symposium, together with the subsequent surge in research, produced a “semiotic revolution” in the field of all humanities in our country.

Ivanov’s works on the subject of semiotics laid the general ideological foundation for semiotic research in the USSR and the world-famous Moscow-Tartu semiotic school.

Humanitarian precision

Ivanov was constantly interested in the connection between linguistics and other sciences, especially the natural ones. In the 1970s and 1980s, he took an active part in experiments conducted in collaboration with neurophysiologists on the localization of semantic operations in various parts of the brain. He saw his task as creating a unified picture of knowledge so that, as he said, “the humanities would not be such outcasts against the background of those flourishing sciences that use precise methods.” Therefore, it is no coincidence that he is interested in the personalities of major natural scientists, to whom he devotes separate essays: geologist Vladimir Vernadsky, radio engineer Axel Berg, astrophysicist Joseph Shklovsky, cyberneticist Mikhail Tsetlin.

It is no coincidence that Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich saw similarities between linguistics and mathematics, emphasizing the mathematical rigor of phonetic laws and the closeness of the laws of language functioning and natural science laws.

Ivanov's linguistic interests were extremely diverse. These are general problems of the genealogical classification of the world's languages ​​and Indo-European studies, Slavic linguistics and the ancient languages ​​of the extinct peoples of the Mediterranean in their relation to the North Caucasian languages, the languages ​​of the aborigines of Siberia and the Far East, the Aleutian language, Bamileke and some other African languages. He said about himself: “I am not a polyglot at all, although I speak all European languages. I can read like a hundred. But it's not that difficult."

But he not only studied languages. His track record includes dozens of translations of poems, stories, journalistic articles and scientific works from various languages ​​of the world.

He said about himself: “I am not a polyglot at all, although I speak all European languages. I can read like a hundred. But it's not that difficult." But Ivanov not only studied languages. His track record includes dozens of translations of poems, stories, journalistic articles and scientific works from various languages ​​of the world.

Thanks to the works of Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov in the mid-1950s, Indo-European studies was actually revived in our country, one of the outstanding achievements of which was the monograph “Indo-European Language and Indo-Europeans. Reconstruction and historical-typological analysis of proto-language and proto-culture”, created jointly with Tamaz Gamkrelidze. This book was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1988 and caused great resonance throughout the world.

For more than half a century, starting in 1954, Ivanov systematically sums up the current state of linguistic comparative studies in the form of an updated version of the genealogical classification of the world's languages. Since the 1970s, this scheme has included kinship at the Nostratic level, and since the 1980s, Dene-Caucasian kinship. And each time it turns out that we are closer and closer to proving the hypothesis about the monogenesis of human languages, that is, about their origin from a single source, since more and more new connections are being discovered between language families.

From 1989 until recently, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich was the director of the Institute of World Culture of Moscow State University. Since 1992 - Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages ​​and Literatures at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Since 2003 - director of the Russian Anthropological School at the Russian State University for the Humanities. Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich - Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, member of the American Academy of Sciences and Arts.

In recent years, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich has had a hard time experiencing the problems of Russian science. In one of his last speeches, he said: “I have been surprised lately to read various kinds of attacks on our science and its current situation. Believe me, I have been reading every day for more than a year what is written on this topic on the Internet in serious messages and in the scientific press. And the main thing is still a discussion of the works of our scientists, who enjoy worldwide fame and recognition anywhere, but not in our country... But I am sure that it is not the lack of money that is given to science, although this, of course, takes place, some minor troubles like the wrong exam form, but a much more significant thing is happening: science, literature, art, culture in our country have ceased to be the main thing to be proud of. It seems to me that the task that my generation was partly trying to accomplish was that we wanted to achieve a change in this situation, and to some extent, maybe some of us achieved.”

On October 7, Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich passed away.

Some people are able to speak so many languages ​​that it is almost impossible to believe. How they do it, and what other people can learn from polyglots.

In Berlin, sitting on a sun-drenched balcony, Tim Kiely and Daniel Kraza engage in a verbal skirmish. First, German words fly out like bullets, then in Hindi, and then Nepalese, Polish, Croatian, Chinese, Thai... During the conversation, the languages ​​flow casually into one another. These two went through a total of 20 different languages ​​or so!

Returning from the balcony to the hall, I find several small groups there, whose participants compete in tongue twisters. Others, in groups of three, are preparing for a rapid-fire game in which they need to simultaneously translate between two languages. This all sounds like a guaranteed recipe for a migraine, but those present are completely unfazed.

Learning even one foreign language can be a daunting task. In Berlin, I found myself at a Gathering of Polyglots, which brought together about 350 people who spoke many languages, such unusual ones as, for example, the language of the Isle of Man, Klingon (the language of aliens from the Star Trek series), Sami - the language of the nomadic people - reindeer herders of Scandinavia. There are a surprising number of “hyperglots” among those gathered, capable, like Kili and Kraza, of speaking at least 10 languages.

One of the most outstanding linguists I met here was Richard Simcott. He leads a team of polyglots at a multilingual social media management company called eModeration, and speaks nearly 30 languages ​​himself.

With my limited knowledge of Italian and rudimentary Danish, I feel somehow out of place among the “hyperglots”. But, as popular wisdom says, you need to learn from the best - and so I’m here to try to find out their secrets.

Cure for dementia

Considering all the challenging brain tasks that learning a foreign language poses to us, it is not surprising that most of us consider it a task that requires significant commitment. A person has many different memory systems, and when learning another language, each of them is involved.

There is a so-called procedural memory - this is subtle programming of muscles to improve pronunciation. There is declarative memory, i.e. ability to remember facts (e.g., remember at least 10k words if you want to approach native fluency, not to mention grammar). Moreover, unless you want to sound like a stuttering robot, these words and phrases should be on the tip of your tongue in a split second. This means that they must be programmed into "explicit" and "implicit" memory. The first stores information that we deliberately tried to remember, the second contains things that were deposited unconsciously, involuntarily.

We try to learn individual words or phrases, but this is not the main thing

Such mental exercises, however, bear abundant fruit; it is claimed to be the best brain training available. Numerous studies have shown that speaking multiple languages ​​improves attention and memory, and also provides a “cognitive reserve” that delays the development of dementia.

Studying the experiences of immigrants, Ellen Bialystok from York University in Canada found that among those who were bilingual, there was a five-year delay in diagnosis of dementia. People who spoke three languages ​​were diagnosed 6.4 years later than those who spoke three languages. At the same time, people who spoke four or more languages ​​fluently enjoyed nine extra years of healthy mental health.

Learning a new language at an older age is easier than we imagine

These long-term benefits stand in stark contrast to the failure of most commercial brain-training games that can be downloaded from the Internet. In general, they are not able to provide long-term improvements in memory and attention.

Until recently, many neuroscientists assumed that in most cases we are too old to achieve native fluency in a new language. According to the “critical period hypothesis,” there is a narrow window of time during childhood when we are able to absorb all the nuances of a new language. However, based on her research, Bialystok argues that this is somewhat exaggerated: instead of a sharp decline, as she found out, there is a very slight weakening of our abilities over the years.

Indeed, many of the “hyperglots” I met in Berlin did not master foreign languages ​​in childhood. Kiely grew up in Florida, and at school he was in close contact with children for whom Spanish was their native language. As a child, he tuned his radio to foreign radio stations, although he could not understand a word.

Do you want to have a clear mind as you age? Learn a foreign language, or better yet, two

As an adult, he began traveling around the world. First he went to Colombia, where he studied French, German and Portuguese. Then he moved to Switzerland, then to Eastern Europe, after which he went to Japan. He now speaks at least 20 languages ​​fluently, and learned almost all of them as an adult.

The question arises as to how polyglots master so many new languages, and whether others can at least try to follow suit. It is true, of course, that they may still be much more motivated than most people. Many polyglots are avid travelers like Keely, who, moving from country to country, pick up new languages ​​along the way. Sometimes the alternative is: either swim or drown.

Even with the most powerful incentives, many of us have difficulty speaking another language. Tim Keely who is currently writing a book on “the social, psychological and emotional factors of multilingualism,” is skeptical that it is a matter of baseline intelligence.

"Cultural Chameleons"

Instead of focusing on the level of intelligence, he believes, we should look into the depths of our own individuality. According to Keely's theory, when we begin to learn a new language, it results in us re-developing a sense of our own identity. It is not for nothing that the best linguists adopt new identities so easily.

Psychologists have long known that the words we speak leave an imprint on our personality. According to established clichés, French makes you more romantic, while Italian makes you more passionate. But in fact, every language comes to be associated with cultural norms that influence the way you behave. It could be something as simple as your preference for open trustfulness or quiet contemplation. The important thing is that, according to various studies, multilingual people behave differently depending on what language they are speaking at that moment.

To master a foreign language, you need to transform into another person

Different languages ​​bring to mind different memories from your life. The writer Vladimir Nabokov found this out when he was working on his autobiography. Nabokov, whose native language was Russian, began writing his memoirs in his second language, English. The matter proceeded with “painful labor”: his “memory was tuned to one mode - musically unspoken Russian - and another mode was imposed on it, English and detailed,” Nabokov wrote in the preface to the Russian edition of the book “Other Shores”.

When the memoirs were finally published, he decided to translate them into the language of his childhood, but as soon as the Russian words began to flow, he discovered that the memories began to be saturated with new details, and the blank spots began to fill in and take on form and content.

In her book, The Bilingual Mind, she explores many of these effects. As for Nabokov, one might think that each of his two essences - Russian and English - had a slightly different past.

Resistance to the process of re-identifying yourself prevents you from properly mastering another language, says Tim Keeley, now a professor of cross-cultural management at Kyushu Sangyo University in Fukuoka, Japan. He recently conducted a study among native Chinese speakers learning Japanese, looking at the "permeability" or "transparency" of their egos. He asked students to evaluate statements such as “I find it easy to put myself in someone else’s shoes and imagine how they feel” or “I can impress people.” Then he asked questions like “can the respondent change his opinion so that it suits others.” As he predicted, people who scored high on these measures achieved fluency in the new language faster.

How to explain this? It is well known that if you identify with someone, you are more likely to imitate them. In the process of imitation, the degree of language acquisition increases almost effortlessly. At the same time, the acquired identity and the memories associated with it can help you not to confuse the language you are learning with your native one by creating neural barriers between them.

And in fact, perhaps this is precisely what explains the ease with which Keely switches to any of the 20 languages ​​he knows.

Language is theater

Of all the polyglots, Michael Levy Harris is the best at demonstrating this principle in action. Harris, who trained as an actor, also has advanced knowledge of 10 languages ​​and a good understanding of 12 others. This poses some challenges for him from time to time. One day he came across an advertisement on the Internet about a meeting of the Maltese. Having gone to the address where he expected to meet a group of people from Malta, he found himself in a room full of middle-aged ladies with white pet dogs - Maltese lapdogs. He recreated this adventure in the recently released short film Hyperglot.

New acquaintances and friendship motivate to learn foreign languages

It's not just about how much time you spend studying and how much you speak a foreign language

When we meet him in a cafe near the Guildhall School of Music and Dramatic Art in London, he effortlessly switches to a very refined English pronunciation (received pronunciation or RP - "standard English" without regional or social accents), despite the fact that he is a native New Yorker. At the same time, his demeanor changes, he simply dissolves into a new personality. “I am not at all trying to consciously change my character or my personality. It happens on its own, but I know I’m suddenly different.”

It is also important, Harris believes, that anyone can learn to take on the skin of another culture, and he is ready to give some tips, based on his acting experience, where to start.

An important technique, he says, is to try to imitate without thinking about how the word is spelled.

He advises paying close attention to things like facial expressions, as they can be key to how sounds are produced. If, for example, you pout your lips slightly when speaking, you will sound a little more “French.”

Finally, he says, you should try to overcome the embarrassment of having to make “weird” sounds, such as the guttural sounds of Arabic. “You should understand that there is nothing “foreign” about them for us. For example, when you feel disgusted, you can make a belching sound, right? Once you acknowledge this and allow your subconscious to do the same in speech, you will be able to produce an unusual sound.”

This may seem silly, but the point is to help you overcome your natural inhibitions. “It's about mastering the language - it's the same thing that actors have to do to make the audience believe that the words they speak are their own. When you have control over your words, you can speak with more confidence and people will trust you.”

When we like someone, we begin to imitate his facial expressions and voice, the same should be done with learning a foreign language

However, most agree that you shouldn't be too ambitious, especially in the beginning.

When you start speaking a foreign language, first try to overact a little, like actors do

According to these guidelines, you should practice little and often. At least 15 minutes four times a day.

So said Alex Rawlings, who, together with Richard Simcott, has developed a series of master classes for polyglots, in which they teach participants their techniques. Even if you're too busy or tired for serious study, acting out a dialogue or listening to a popular song in a foreign language can be helpful, says Simcott.

In the United Kingdom, Australia, and the USA, you can easily come to the conclusion that there is no point in straining yourself. In fact, until I met the “hyperglots” face to face, I was still trying to figure out whether their hobby was worth the effort. Perhaps, I thought, it’s all about an innate, although not always deserved, gift.

Yet the hyperglots I met expressed genuine enthusiasm for the fantastic benefits that can only be achieved through complete immersion in other languages. Among them is the opportunity to find new friends and establish contacts, even despite high intercultural barriers.

This is how Harris describes his life in Dubai, for example. “As a Jew living in the Middle East, it was not easy for me. But, as it turned out, one of my best friends is from Lebanon,” he says. “And when I was leaving, he told me: when we first met, I didn’t think that we would become friends.” Now you are leaving, and I am in despair.”

As Judith Mayer, the organizer of the polyglot gathering in Berlin, told me, she saw Russians and Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians talking to each other. “As you learn language after language, you discover new worlds.”

If you are planning to devote time to learning English, French or Chinese, you have no idea what a powerful positive impact this will have on your mind.

This experience has the power to completely change you. Faktrum publishes some compelling arguments.

A growing number of studies confirm that people who speak more than one language have more flexible and developed thinking. They are smarter, problem-solving creatively, and better able to control their feelings and emotions.

When we can easily speak with foreigners in their native language, we can perceive this world differently, as is typical for them. We discover the importance and value of different points of view. We suddenly begin to notice things that others cannot see. Language is a whole world, another universe with its own rules, times, colors and perceptions.

People who speak more than one language think much faster and find the right solutions more often.

The New York Times talks about several studies conducted with people of different ages - and they all show how much learning a new language improves brain activity.

A study conducted by the American National Academy of Sciences reports on the cognitive gains of 7-month-old infants whose parents speak different languages. Children raised in families with parents from different countries develop faster, learn better and adapt well to new circumstances.

Another study of more than 40 older bilinguals found that speaking two or more languages ​​significantly slows brain aging and strongly protects against dementia and Alzheimer's.

Scientists explain the phenomenon this way: the brain is a muscle, and learning a foreign language and periodically using it in everyday life is an excellent exercise for it. The more you learn, the more flexible your brain is and the longer it retains its clarity.

If you can think in two languages, it allows you to “look out of the box” of your habitual perception.

Although this is obvious, research has also been done on this topic. If you master a foreign language, you will inevitably become a creative person. Psychology Today writes that knowing a second language will help you find solutions to complex intellectual problems more easily and quickly and be more creative in your work.

Medical Daily reports the results of a study of 120 students: bilinguals perform better on morphology, syntax and creative essay tasks.

“We have found that bilinguals have clear advantages. They speak and write better in their native language. They solve arithmetic problems better. They solve everyday problems more effectively and are able to think creatively. Not only do they have a better vocabulary, they UNDERSTAND the meaning of words, not just know them. This allows them to see and experience the world on a deeper, more intuitive level." - Dr Fraser Lochlan, lead author of this study.

If children speak multiple languages ​​from an early age, they will better understand different ideas and concepts and be better able to think globally. Knowing two languages ​​is like having two “creative” parts of the brain. One of them is not used by most people.

Elite Daily contributor Chris Riotta says that although he grew up in the United States in an English-speaking family, he also knew Spanish from childhood because his father was an immigrant from Argentina. This allowed him to understand different cultures and communities from childhood, to better understand himself and to discover his creativity.

“I can express myself better than most people” - Chris Riotta.

Knowing two languages ​​will allow you to better understand people and what is going on in their hearts.

Bilinguals are the best communicators. Susan Ervin-Tripp from the University of California (Department of Psychology) has been studying for many years how speaking multiple languages ​​affects a person and his behavior. Here's what she says:

“When we find ourselves in situations that require us to communicate in a non-native language, our values ​​and feelings actually change for a while. Some bilinguals even say that they have two personalities at once, which they can “switch” between when they think.”

And she's right. We don't know if learning another language can help you live two lives at once, but the experience will definitely allow you to better understand people different from yourself. Empathize with them.

Our choice of language can even be used as a tool to change our attitudes toward morality, our beliefs, and even our hobbies.

And knowing several languages ​​helps us better understand ourselves. Of course, this ultimately makes us more relaxed and confident.

Any person who speaks two languages ​​knows the importance and value of this skill. Become one of them!

In general, he says that he knows “only” 100. But he is being modest. During the conversation, we calculated that Sergei Anatolyevich - head of the department of the Russian Humanitarian University, Doctor of Philology, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences - is familiar with no less than 400 languages, taking into account the ancient and languages ​​of small endangered peoples. It only takes him three weeks to learn a language. Among his colleagues, this 43-year-old professor has a reputation as a “walking encyclopedia.” But at the same time he is distinguished by... bad memory.

The most difficult question for me is: “How many languages ​​do you know?” Because it is impossible to answer it accurately. Even 10 languages ​​cannot be known to the same extent. You can know 500 - 600 words and be able to communicate perfectly well in the country. For example, I know English perfectly, because I have to travel and talk all the time. But I think that my German is better in passive. You can speak poorly, but read well. For example, I read ancient Chinese classics better than most Chinese. Or you can not read or speak, but know the structure and grammar. I cannot speak Negidal or Nanai, but I remember their vocabulary well. Many languages ​​become passive, but then, if necessary, they return: I went to Holland and quickly restored the Dutch language. Therefore, if we count all the languages ​​with which I am familiar at different levels of knowledge, then there will be at least 400 of them. But I actively speak only 20.



Do you feel unique?
- No, I know a lot of people who already know several dozen languages. For example, 80-year-old Australian professor Stephen Wurm knows more languages ​​than I do. And he speaks fluently at thirty.
- Collecting languages ​​- for sport?
- We must distinguish between linguists and polyglots. Polyglots are people who specialize in absorbing a colossal number of languages. And if you are engaged in science, then language is not an end in itself, but a working tool. My main activity is comparing language families with each other. To do this, it is not necessary to speak every language, but you need to keep in mind a colossal amount of information about the roots, grammar, and origin of words.



Is your language learning process still ongoing?
- In 1993 there was an expedition to the Yenisei, they studied the Ket language - an endangered language, about 200 people speak it. I had to teach him. But I learned the bulk of languages ​​at school and university. From the 5th grade, for five years, I was a prize-winner at the Olympiads at Moscow State University: I could write a sentence in 15 Indo-European languages. At the university I studied mainly Eastern languages.
POLYGLOTS ARE BORN.



Are you born with the ability to speak or is it achieved through constant training?
- I thought about it a lot. Naturally, this is heredity: there are a lot of polyglots in my family. My father was a famous translator, edited Doctor Zhivago and knew several dozen languages. My older brother, a philosopher, is also a great polyglot. The older sister is a translator. My son, a student, knows at least a hundred languages. The only family member who is not passionate about languages ​​is the youngest son, but he is a good programmer.
- But how is a person able to store such an array of information in memory?
- And I, paradoxically, have a very bad memory: I don’t remember phone numbers, addresses, I can never find a second time the place I’ve already been to. My first language, German, was very difficult for me. I spent a lot of energy just on memorizing words. I always carried cards with words in my pockets - on one side in German, on the other - in Russian, so that I could check myself on the way on the bus. And by the end of school I had trained my memory.
I remember in my first year at university we were on an expedition to Sakhalin and studied the Nivkh language there, which is also endangered. I went there without any prior preparation and just learned the Nivkh dictionary as a bet. Not all are 30,000 words, of course, but most are.
- In general, how much time does it take you to learn a language?



Three weeks. Although the eastern ones are, of course, much heavier. It took me a year and a half to learn Japanese. I studied it at the university for a whole year, the grades were excellent, but one day I picked up a Japanese newspaper and realized that I couldn’t read anything. I got angry and learned it on my own over the summer.
- Do you have your own learning system?
- I am skeptical about all systems. I just take a textbook and study from beginning to end. It takes two weeks. Then - in different ways. You can tell yourself that you have become familiar with this language and if it becomes necessary, you will take it off the shelf and activate it. There were many such languages ​​in my practice. If the language is necessary and interesting, then you need to read the literature further. I have never used language courses. To speak well, you need a native speaker. The best thing is to go to the country and live there for a year.



What ancient languages ​​do you know?
- Latin, ancient Greek, Sanskrit, ancient Japanese, Hurrian language, in which in the 2nd century BC. e. spoken in ancient Anatolia.
- How do you manage to remember dead languages ​​- there is no one to talk to?
- I’m reading. Only 2-3 texts remain from the Hurrian one. There are languages ​​from which two or three dozen words have been preserved.
HOW ADAM AND EVE TALKED.



You are looking for the proto-language of humanity. Do you think that once upon a time all the people of the world communicated in the same language?
- We are going to discover and prove that all languages ​​were united, and then fell apart in the thirtieth-twentieth century BC.
Language is a means of communication and is passed on as an information code from generation to generation, so it necessarily accumulates errors and interference. We teach our children without noticing that they already speak a slightly different language. There are more subtle differences in their speech from the speech of their elders. Language inevitably changes. 100-200 years pass - it’s a completely different language. If the speakers of one language once dispersed in different directions, then after a thousand years two different languages ​​will appear.
And we have to find out - did the 6,000 modern languages, including dialects, have a starting point? We are gradually moving from modern languages ​​to ancient ones. It's like linguistic paleontology - step by step we reconstruct sounds and words, getting closer to proto-languages. And now the stage has come when it is possible to bring together several large language families, of which there are now about ten in the world. And then the task is to restore the proto-languages ​​of these macro-families and see if they can be brought together and reconstruct a single language that Adam and Eve may have spoken.



THEY CAN ONLY LAUGH IN RUSSIA.
- Which language is the most difficult and which is the easiest?
- Grammar is simpler in English and Chinese. I learned Esperanto in about an hour and a half. Sanskrit and ancient Greek are difficult to learn. But the most difficult language on earth is Abkhazian. Russian - average. It is difficult for foreigners to understand only because of the complex alternation of consonants (hand-hand) and stress.
- Are many languages ​​dying?
- All languages ​​in the Urals and beyond the Urals, Nivkh and Ket are from the Yenisei family. In North America they are dying out by the dozens. A scary process.
- What is your attitude towards profanity? Is this trash?
- These words are no different from other words. The comparative linguist is accustomed to dealing with the names of the genital organs in any language. English expressions are significantly poorer than Russian ones. Japanese is much less clogged with swear words: they are a more polite people.



Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (March 24, 1953, Moscow - September 30, 2005, Moscow) is an outstanding Russian linguist, polyglot, specialist in the field of comparative studies, oriental studies, Caucasian studies and Indo-European studies. The son of the writer, translator, polyglot Anatoly Starostin, brother of the philosopher and historian of science Boris Starostin. Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in the Department of Literature and Language (linguistics). Head of the Center for Comparative Studies at the Institute of Oriental Cultures and Antiquity of the Russian State University for the Humanities, chief researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, honorary doctor of the University of Leiden (Netherlands).