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Written by Seven Kings
Learning a foreign language is a headache for many people, even children, and it is already very good to be fluent in a foreign language, but some people can speak 24 languages fluently. What is even more shocking is that such a "gifted" person is a cleaner. How is the brain of a person who can fluently speak 24 languages different from the average person? Why are people of this talent doing cleaners? Today we will take a look at the story of multilingualists.
Image source: wikimedia
If you're looking for someone to clean the carpet in Washington, D.C., you might meet a cleaner who can bargain with you in 24 languages.
In an international city like Washington, D.C., an interpreter who can fluently speak a foreign language can easily earn a six-figure annual salary, but the cleaner has spent most of his life in obscurity, earning less than $20 an hour and living with his mother in middle age.
This "sweeper" who lived in seclusion in the metropolis was called Vaughn Smith. He became famous this year through a washington post report.
Vaughn Smith, who is learning a foreign language. Image source: See watermark
Vaughn is very humble, saying he speaks only 24 languages, of which 8 are fluent (at the level of native speakers): English, Spanish, Bulgarian, Czech, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Slovak.
In fact, according to tests by researchers at MIT and Harvard University, as well as by a reporter for the Washington Post, he can speak at least 37 languages, 24 of which can be fluent at the level of general conversation. Of course, he can not only speak the above 8 languages, but also read and write.
People who can speak more than 2 languages are called polyglots, but linguists have a special name for multilinguals like him: hyperpolyglot. In linguistics research, knowing 6 languages is a watershed between multilingualism and super multilingualism.
There are only a handful of contemporary super-multilinguals. According to Richard Hudson, a linguist at University College London, there are currently about 30 people around the world who claim to speak more than 10 languages.
Derick Herning, who speaks at least 22 languages, passed away in 2019. Image source: See watermark
In 1990, there was a public test for super multilinguals. Participants talk to native speakers, and then the referee rates them based on their fluency. The winner was a Scot named Derick Herning. This Scottish organist is fluent in 22 languages and converses with native speakers. It is said that he later learned 8 new languages.
Then came a man who was said to speak 58 languages: Ziad Fazah, a Lebanese Liberian. His language skills entered the Guinness Book of World Records published in 1998. But on a Television show in Chile, he couldn't answer a question in his native language.
Ziad Fazah。 Image source: Network
In fact, in history, super multilingualism is also rare. The 19th-century Irish scholar Charles William Russell collated historical documents and found that only 4 people could write and speak in more than 50 languages.
It also makes one intrigued by Vaughn's brain. How is the brain of a multilingual person different from that of the average person?
Evelina Fedorenko, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been studying multilinguals, especially super multilingualists. She and Saima Malik-Moraleda, a neuroscientist at Harvard University, scanned Vaughn's brain with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see how his brain responds when he hears different languages.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging measures blood oxygen levels in different areas of the brain. Image source: wikimedia
Functional magnetic resonance imaging measures blood oxygen levels in different areas of the brain. Blood oxygen levels reflect the degree to which neurons in this region "work hard," and the more "forcefully" the brain region consumes more oxygen.
You might take it for granted that as a super-multilingual, Vaughn's brain must be very active, so the brain oxygen consumption must be very high.
Facts will shock your jaw. In fact, Vaughn's brain looks "calm": His brain consumes much less oxygen than the average person when he hears any language. Even when he hears his native language, his brain is much quieter than that of a native speaker.
A comparison of the oxygen consumption of vaughn (left) and the average person (right) when hearing English. Image source: See watermark
When you think about it, it's actually quite logical. Because Vaughn's brain is efficient, it does not have to struggle to understand language, and it is not surprising that the oxygen consumption is lower than ordinary people. It's like a motherboard with good performance won't get hot when you use it.
Malik-Moraleda explains: "Vaughn consumes less oxygen in the brain region that processes language when speaking his native language. Because he often uses different languages, his brain is extremely efficient. ”
Other researchers have similar results.
Evelina Fedorenko, a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, found that the associated brain regions were less active when using their mother tongue; neurons only began to become active as tests became more difficult.
Of course, multilinguals also increase brain activity when faced with unfamiliar language. But compared to people who can only speak one or two languages, their neuronal activity increases even less. In other words, their brains are more efficient at processing foreign languages and therefore do not need to expend more energy.
Do these findings suggest that language ability and IQ are closely related?
It is true that most IQ tests have a sub-volume that measures language proficiency. But in 1991, researchers reported the case of a man alias christopher. The poor man was diagnosed with brain damage six months after birth, and he was unable to take care of himself as an adult, so he had to live in a mental hospital.
However, Christopher has a unique ability: although his non-verbal IQ is only 40-70 points (generally less than 70 points is low intelligence), and his verbal IQ is only 89 points (lower than the average score of the crowd of 100), he has learned 16 languages and is a proper super multilingual. The researchers believe Christopher may have scholar syndrome.
Image source: wikimedia
"Mentally handicapped" can actually become a "genius" in language, where does the ability of so many language speakers come from?
There is no definitive answer to this question, as the scarcity of the sample makes the study of super multilinguals even rarer. But Simon Fisher, a geneticist at the University of Oxford, discovered in 2001 that the FOXP2 gene is closely related to language ability.
FOXP2, also often referred to as the "language gene," is thought to be the genetic cornerstone that confers the language abilities of Homo sapiens. In fact, many animals also have this gene, such as songbirds, but their versions are not the same as humans.
Songbirds also have the FOXP2 gene. Image source: pxhere
In humans, mutations in the FOXP2 gene can lead to a language disorder called verbal dyspraxia: Patients are unable to invoke their own pronunciation muscles and therefore cannot speak.
Some scholars believe that acquired factors have made polyglots.
Loraine Obler, a neuroscientist at New York University, points out that there is a theory that multilingual people are related to their ability to the uterine environment during the fetal period.
Image credit: pixabay
If intrauterine testosterone (a male hormone) surges during pregnancy, the asymmetry of the fetal brain increases, and the child is more likely to become left-handed, suffer from immune system diseases, have learning disabilities, and have homosexual tendencies, but at the same time, their ability to work in art and language will also increase.
This theory is consistent with Hudson's findings.
Hudson did a questionnaire in 2009 with about 400 multilinguals. Of these participants, half were able to speak at least 7 languages, and 17 of them spoke at least 11 languages. He found that most of these multilinguals had such characteristics: left-handed, autistic tendencies, autoimmune diseases (such as allergies or asthma), homosexuality, and men.
Hudson's portraits overlap partially with Vaughn himself, but the latter also gives us a deeper understanding of the diversity of the super-multilingual community.
Vaughn was a child. Image source: See watermark
Vaughn never takes the initiative to show off his language skills to others, which is an important reason for his long obscurity. But such a humble person says that he can remember immediately what he has seen. He has an unforgettable ability to remember names, numbers, dates and pronunciations, so he has been interested in learning foreign languages since he was a child.
A child with self-learning motivation like this should be a treasure of the teacher, right?
In fact, the teachers often complained to his parents that the baby was difficult to carry, because he often misread sentences when reading textbooks. His mom also felt powerless and didn't know how to teach him. Growing up, Vaughn speculated that he might have had some autistic tendencies when he was a child through contact with some autistic people and their families.
Coupled with the blow of his parents' divorce, the language genius's education stopped in high school, and then he began to enter society. He worked in a variety of jobs, eventually working as a cleaner at his brother's carpet cleaning company and living with his mom.
Vaughn Smith。 Image source: See watermark
Vaughn's life trajectory stands in stark contrast to that of a famous super-multilingual man in history whose background he has a similar background.
In the 19th century, a man named Giuseppe Mezzofanti spoke more than 100 languages, including Chinese (this was in 19th-century Europe).
Mezzofanti's ability to learn the language was undoubtedly astonishing, and Lord Byron recorded that Mezzofanti mastered a new language in two days. Lord Byron, who was also a polyglot, used to swear in more language than this guy, and as a result, Byron lost, and he angrily called Mezzofanti a "monster".
Giuseppe Mezzofanti。 Image source: wikipedia
Mezzofanti was born into a humble beginning, the son of a carpenter. He learned Latin by standing outside the seminary and "stealing teachers." But then he became an Italian cardinal and was happy to show his gift for language to the world.
But on the road to becoming a super multilingual, Vaughn never had such confidence. Faced with the interest shown by MIT and Harvard researchers, Vaughn gradually reconciled with himself until the middle-aged Vaughn: "I am not a useless person." ”
Talent may be "useless" if it is not displayed, but as long as it is recorded by researchers, it will not be wasted.
The master is wandering, the monster is in the temple.
Cover source: the washington post
Resources:
https://docs.qq.com/doc/DVGpVUlVqeHpwZU9G
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