hyperpolyglots
Meet the Hyperpolyglots, the People Who Can Mysteriously Speak Up to 32 Different Languages
Polyglot, as its Greek roots take no great pains to conceal, means the speaking of multiple languages. Somewhat less obvious is the meaning of the associated term hyperpolylot. “Coined two decades ago, by a British linguist, Richard Hudson, who was launching an Internet search for the world’s greatest language learner,” the New Yorker’s Judith Thurman writes, it refers not just to the speaking of multiple languages but the speaking of many languages. How many is “many”? “The accepted threshold is eleven,” which disqualifies even most of us avid language connoisseurs. But Vaughn Smith easily makes the cut.
You can meet this formidable hyperpolyglot in the Washington Post video above, which complements Jessica Contrera’s story in the paper. Smith grew up in D.C. speaking not just English but Spanish, his mother’s native language. On his father’s side of the family, distant cousins from Belgium expanded Smith’s linguistic worldview further still.
At 46 years of age, he now speaks just about as many languages, “with at least 24 he speaks well enough to carry on lengthy conversations. He can read and write in eight alphabets and scripts. He can tell stories in Italian and Finnish and American Sign Language. He’s teaching himself Indigenous languages, from Mexico’s Nahuatl. to Montana’s Salish. The quality of his accents in Dutch and Catalan dazzle people from the Netherlands and Spain.”
Unlike his fellow hyperpolyglot Ioannis Ikonomou, profiled in the Great Big Story video above, Smith is not a translator. Nor does he work as a linguist, a diplomat, or anything else you’d expect. “Vaughn has been a painter, a bouncer, a punk rock roadie and a Kombucha delivery man,” writes Contrera.
TANIKO Madagascar 