Mezzofanti's Gift: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners - Brossura

Michael Erard

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0715645684 ISBN 13: 9780715645680

Casa editrice: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, 2013

Riassunto

Multilingualism is on the rise in the coming decades, as many as two billion people will learn English as a second language. The next stage up from multilingualism is the domain of the hyperpolyglot or superlearner: someone who claims to know at least six languages. But what does it mean to know a language? Can a person claim to speak a language fluently if it isn't their mother tongue? What role does culture play in learning languages? In this accessible and enthralling book, Michael Erard discusses the upper limits of the brain's capacity to learn languages and sheds light on the hyperpolyglot phenomenon, from the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, who was said to speak as many as seventy-two languages, to the superlearners of the 21st century. Erard's exploration spans the globe as he travels to meet these living marvels and to investigate those of antiquity, and his discoveries not only illuminate the intellectual potential within all of us, but also indicate how we might begin to unlock it.

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Recensione:

Michael Erard has written the first serious book about the people who master vast numbers of languages or claim to ... he approaches his topic with both wonder and a healthy dash of scepticism ... fascinating --Economist

A fine addition to our favourite books about language ... Captivating and illuminating, Mezzofanti's Gift is as much an absorbing piece of investigative voyeurism into superhuman feats as it is an intelligent invitation to visit the outer limits of our own cerebral potential --Atlantic Monthly

Erard gets beneath the surface of the hyperpolyglot, piercing the myth of perfect competence, to show the actual landscape of motives, obstacles and satisfactions that texture the world of the long-distance language-learner --Nicholas Ostler, author of The Last Lingua Franca

L'autore:

Michael Erard has an MA in Linguistics and a PhD in English from the University of Texas, and has taught all around the world. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Science, Wired and New Scientist. He is the author of Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0715645684
• ISBN 13: 9780715645680
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 320