首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canoni
Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canoni
admin
2015-08-29
26
问题
Cardinal Mezzofanti of Bologna was a secular saint. Though he never performed the kind of miracle needed to be officially canonized, his power was close to unearthly. Mezzofanti was said to speak 72 languages. Or 50. Or to have fully mastered 30. No one was certain of the true figure, but it was a lot. Visitors flocked from all corners of Europe to test him and came away stunned. He could switch between languages with ease. Two condemned prisoners were due to be executed, but no one knew their language to hear their confession. Mezzofanti learned it in a night, heard their sins the next morning and saved them from hell.
Or so the legend goes. In "Babel No More", Michael Erard has written the first serious book about the people who master vast numbers of languages or claim to. A journalist with some linguistics training, Mr. Erard is not a hyperpolyglot himself(he speaks some Spanish and Chinese), but he approaches his topic with both wonder and a healthy dash of scepticism.
Mezzofanti, for example, was a high-ranking clergyman born in 1774. In most of his interactions, he would have been the one to pick the topic of conversation, and he could rely on the same formulae he had used many times. He lived in an age when "knowing" a language more often meant reading and translating rather than speaking fluently with natives. Nonetheless, Mezzofanti clearly had speaking talent: his English accent was so good as to be almost too correct, an Irish observer noted.
To find out whether anyone could really learn so many languages, Mr. Erard set out to find modern Mezzo-fantis. The people he meets are certainly interesting. One man with a mental age of nine has a vast memory for foreign words and the use of grammatical endings, but he cannot seem to break free of English word-order. Ken Hale, who was a linguist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and died in 2001, was said to have learned 50 languages, including notoriously difficult Finnish while on a flight to Helsinki. Professional linguists still swear by his talent. But he insisted he spoke only three(English, Spanish and Warlpiri—from Australia’s Northern Territory)and could merely "talk in" others.
Mr. Erard says that true hyperpolyglottery begins at about 11 languages, and that while legends abound, tried and tested exemplars are few. Ziad Fazah, raised in Lebanon and now living in Brazil, once held the Guinness world record for 58 languages. But when surprised on a Chilean television show by native speakers, he utterly flubbed questions in Finnish, Mandarin, Farsi and Russian(including "What day is it today?" in Russian), a failure that lives in infamy on YouTube. Perhaps he was a fraud: perhaps he simply had a miserable day. Hyperpolyglots must warm up or "prime" their weaker languages, with a few hours’ or days’ practice, to use them comfortably. Switching quickly between more than around six or seven is near-impossible even for the most gifted.
Does that mean they don’t really know them? Is instant availability of native-like competence the only standard for "knowing" a language? How should partly knowing a tongue be tallied? What if you can only read in it? Mr. Erard repeatedly peppers his text with such questions, feeling his way through his story as a thoughtful observer, rather than banging about like an academic with a theory to defend or a pitchman with a technique to sell.
Hyperpolyglots are more likely to be introverted than extroverted, which may come as a surprise to some. Hale’s son always said that, in his father’s case, languages were a cloak for a shy man. Another, Alexander Ar-guelles, has learned dozens of languages only to read them, saying "It’s rare that you have an interesting conversation in English. Why do I think it would be any better in another language?" Emil Krebs, an early-20th-century German diplomat who was also credited with knowing dozens of languages, was boorish in all of them. He once refused to speak to his wife for several months because she told him to put on a winter coat. Different hypotheses may explain part of the language-learner’s gift. Some hyperpolyglots seem near-autistic.
At the end of his story, however, he finds a surprise in Mezzofanti’s archive: flashcards. Stacks of them, in Georgian, Hungarian, Arabic, Algonquin and nine other tongues. The world’s most celebrated hyperpolyglot relied on the same tools given to first-year language-learners today. The conclusion? Hyperpolyglots may begin with talent, but they aren’t geniuses. They simply enjoy tasks that are drudgery to normal people. The talent and enjoyment drive a virtuous cycle that pushes them to feats others simply shake their heads at, admiration mixed with no small amount of incomprehension.
It can be inferred from the passage that
选项
A、Mezzofanti was rather distinctive in his era.
B、it’s easier to translate than speak in foreign language.
C、native speakers of English were surprised at Mezzofanti’s English.
D、Mezzofanti was among the few clergymen who were multilingual.
答案
A
解析
推断题。由选项巾的Mezzofanti定位至第三段。第三句指出“He lived in an age when‘knowing’alanguage more often meant reading and translating rather than speaking fluently with natives.”,结合第二句“In most of his interactions…he had used many times.”可以判断,Mezzofanti用谈话的方式与人交流,与当时掌握外语的其他人不同,因此[A]符合文意,故为答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/LMYYFFFM
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
Contrasttoresearchers’expectations,dysfunctionalfamilyrelationshipsandpoor【M1】______.communicationstylesappearto
Alotofpeoplebelievethattelevisionhasaharmfuleffectonchildren.Afewyearsago,thesamecriticismsweremadeofthe
Studentslivinginthecampushavedifferentviewsonvisitationhoursestablishedforgirls’dormitory,whileyoucanvisitboys
ExpositionExpositioniswritingthatexplains.Mostofthebooksinuniversityli-brariesareexamplesofexposition.Alth
Itwasnearlybedtimeandwhentheyawokenextmorninglandwouldbeinsight.Dr.Macphaillithispipeand,leaningoverther
Itwasnearlybedtimeandwhentheyawokenextmorninglandwouldbeinsight.Dr.Macphaillithispipeand,leaningoverther
HowtoReduceStressLifeisfullofthingsthatcauseusstress.Thoughwemaynotlikestress,wehavetolivewithit.I.De
HowtoReduceStressLifeisfullofthingsthatcauseusstress.Thoughwemaynotlikestress,wehavetolivewithit.I.De
Aninternationalteamofastronomershasdiscovered11newplanetsoutsidethesolarsystem,raisingfreshspeculationaboutthe
AccordingtothenewFrontlineHealthWorkersCoalition,traininghealthcareworkerscan
随机试题
胃溃疡好发于胃小弯侧,镜下可见溃疡底部有坏死层、肉芽组织层、纤维瘢痕层三层结构。()
急性有机磷农药中毒最主要的死因
A.低血容量性休克B.低阻力型感染性休克C.心源性休克D.过敏性休克E.神经源性休克中心静脉压不↓、心输出量不↓外周阻力↓
筹资抵押在建设项目筹资经济活动中可能的实际运用不包括( )。
被公安机关刑讯逼供致残的公民,有权要求公安机关赔偿以下选项中的哪些费用?()
先天性免疫是指机体在长期的种系发育和进化过程中,不断与外界侵入的病原微生物及其他抗原异物接触和作用中,逐渐建立起来一系列防卫机制。特异性免疫又称后天性免疫,是机体在生活过程中接触病原微生物及抗原异物后产生的免疫力。下列属于先天性免疫的是()。
研究表明,每天晚上喝杯牛奶的人比不喝牛奶的入睡眠更好。这是因为牛奶中含有一种能使人产生疲倦欲睡的生化物L色氨酸,还有微量吗啡类物质,这些物质都有一定的镇静催眠作用。由此不能推出()。
菟丝子将其不定根伸入到豆科植物的维管束内,吸收水分和养料。这两种植物的关系属于:
Don’tRelyonPlanktontoSavethePlanetEncouragingplanktongrowthintheoceanhasbeentoutedbysomeasapromisingwayto
Completethenotesbelow.ChooseNOMORETHANTWOWORDSfromthepassageforeachanswer.Writeyouranswersinboxes33-37ony
最新回复
(
0
)