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  3. CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI of Bologna was a saint who was said to speak 72 languages. No one was certain of the true figure, but it was

CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI of Bologna was a saint who was said to speak 72 languages. No one was certain of the true figure, but it was

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问题     CARDINAL MEZZOFANTI of Bologna was a saint who was said to speak 72 languages. 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. 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. A journalist with some linguistics training, Mr. Erard is not a hyperpolyglot himself, but he approaches his topic with both wonder and a healthy dash of skepticism.
    To find out whether anyone could really learn so many languages, Mr. Erard set out to find modern Mezzofantis. 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 MIT and died in 2001, was said to have learned 50 languages. Professional linguists still swear by his talent. But he insisted he spoke only three 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.
    Hyperpolyglots are likely to be introverted, 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. Emil Krebs, a German diplomat who was also credited with knowing dozens of languages, was rude 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.
    At the end of his story, however, Erard finds a surprise in Mezzofanti’s archive: flashcards. Stacks of them in twelve 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 tedious to normal people. The talent and enjoyment drive a virtuous cycle that pushes them to feats others simply shake their heads at.
It can be learned from the passage that Ken Hale was______.
选项 A、outgoing
B、modest
C、strong-willed
D、reliable
答案B
解析 第三段的后半段讲到了麻省理工学院的Ken Hale。据说他学习了50种语言，很多专业的语言学家对他的才能深信不疑。但他自己却坚持说他只能讲三种语言，其他语言只能达到“会话”水平。可以看出他非常谦虚。
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