Who knows the most languages ​​in the world. A person who knows many languages ​​as they say - the secrets of learning the languages ​​of the world. common myths about polyglots

Fjournal "Science and Life" (No. 3, 2006)
How many languages ​​can a person learn?

Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti was fluent in 39 languages ​​and 50 dialects, although he never traveled outside Italy. Born into a poor carpenter's family in Bologna. While still at the church school, he learned Latin, Ancient Greek, Spanish and German, and from the teachers of the school - former missionaries in Central and South America - he learned several Indian languages. Mezzofanti also shone in other subjects and graduated from school ahead of schedule, so that due to his youth he could not be ordained a priest. While waiting for this sacrament for several years, he learned a number of other Eastern and Middle Eastern languages. During Napoleonic Wars served as a chaplain in a hospital, where he "picked up" several more European languages ​​from the wounded and sick. For many years he was the chief curator of the Vatican Library, where he also expanded his linguistic knowledge.

In October 2003, Dick Hudson, professor of linguistics at University College London, received an interesting e-mail. The author of the letter belatedly came across on a linguistic forum on the Internet a question asked by Hudson a few years earlier: which polyglot holds the world record for the most languages? And he answered him: perhaps it was my grandfather.

The author of the letter, who lives in the United States and asked not to give his last name in print or on the Internet, reported that his grandfather, an Italian who emigrated from Sicily to America in the 10s of the last century, never went to school, but learned foreign languages with extraordinary ease. By the end of his life, the previously illiterate Sicilian spoke 70 languages ​​of the world and could read and write 56 of them.

When this phenomenon sailed to New York, he was 20 years old; he took a job as a porter at a railway station, and his work constantly confronted him with people of different nationalities. This is how his interest in languages ​​arose.

Apparently, things went well for the young porter with unusual linguistic abilities, so that, according to his grandson, in the 50s of the last century, he and his grandfather made a six-month trip around the world. And in every country - and they visited Venezuela, Argentina, Norway, England, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Africa, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan - my grandfather spoke to the locals in their language.

It is curious that the travelers spent two weeks in Thailand. The polyglot grandfather did not know Thai, but by the end of his stay he was already bargaining in Thai at the bazaar. His grandson, later serving in the American army, spent a year and a half in Thailand and mastered the local language a little. Returning to the United States, he found that his grandfather knew Thai better than he did.

The polyglot's grandson told the professor that this was not the first time in their family that they knew many languages. Great-grandfather and his brother spoke over a hundred languages.

Professor Hudson's other correspondents reminded him of such outstanding personalities as the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti (1774-1849), who knew 72 languages ​​and spoke 39 of them fluently. Or the Hungarian translator Kato Lomb (1909-2003), who spoke 17 languages ​​and could read 11 more (see Science and Life, No. 8, 1978). Or the German Emil Krebs (1867-1930), who spoke 60 languages ​​fluently (for example, he learned Armenian in nine weeks).

According to some reports, the 19th century German scientist Friedrich Engels knew 24 languages.

For such phenomena, Professor Hudson coined the term "hyperpolyglots." As such, he refers to everyone who speaks six languages ​​or more. Why exactly at six? Because in some parts of the world, almost one hundred percent of the population is fluent in up to five languages. For example, Switzerland has four official languages, and many Swiss know all four and even English.

Linguists, psychologists, and neuroscientists are interested in such people. Do hyperpolyglots have some kind of special brain, and if so, what is this feature? Or are they ordinary people with average brains who have achieved unusual results thanks to a fortunate coincidence of circumstances, personal interest and hard work? For example, Heinrich Schliemann learned 15 languages, as he needed languages ​​both as an international merchant and as an amateur archaeologist. It is believed that Cardinal Mezzofanti once learned a language rare for Italy in one night, since in the morning he had to accept a confession from a foreign criminal sentenced to death.

The existence of people who know several dozen languages ​​is often disputed by skeptics. So, on the same forum on the Internet, one of the participants writes: “But could Mezzofanti know 72 languages? How long would it take to study them? If we assume that there are 20 thousand words in each language (an underestimate) and that a capable person memorizes one word per minute, when he first heard or sees it, then 72 languages ​​would take five and a half years of uninterrupted lessons for 12 hours a day. Is this possible? " And, let's add, even after learning 72 languages, how much time a day should be spent on keeping them in good working order?

But some linguists believe that nothing is impossible in this. So, Suzanne Flynn from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) believes that there are no limits to the ability of the human brain to learn new languages, only a lack of time can interfere. Stephen Pinker from Harvard University (USA) also believes that there is no theoretical limit, except that similar languages ​​in one head begin to interfere with each other. It's just a person's desire.

Other researchers, however, believe that the brain of a hyperpolyglot has some peculiarities. This assumption is supported by the fact that extraordinary abilities for languages ​​are often associated with left-handedness, difficulties with orientation in space and some other features of the psyche.

The brain of the German hyperpolyglot Krebs, who served as a translator at the German embassy in China, is preserved in the collection of the brains of prominent people. It found slight differences from the normal brain in the area that controls speech. But it is not known whether these differences were innate or appeared after the owner of this brain learned 60 languages.

In general, he says that he knows "only" 100. But he is being modest. In the course of the conversation, we calculated that Sergei Anatolyevich is the head of the department of the Russian University for the Humanities, Doctor of Philology, Corresponding Member Russian Academy natural sciences - familiar with no less than 400 languages, taking into account the ancients and languages ​​of small endangered peoples. It takes him only three weeks to learn the language. Among colleagues, this 43-year-old professor has a reputation as a "walking encyclopedia". But at the same time he is distinguished by ... a bad memory.

The most difficult question for me is: "How many languages ​​do you know?" Because it is impossible to answer it exactly. Even 10 languages ​​cannot be known equally. You may know 500 - 600 words and be perfectly able to communicate in the country. For example, I know English perfectly, because I have to travel and talk all the time. But I think that my German is better in passive. And you can speak badly, but read well. For example, I read ancient Chinese classics better than most Chinese. Or you may not read or speak, but know the structure, grammar. I cannot speak Negidal or Nanai, but I remember their vocabulary well. Many languages ​​become passive, but then, if necessary, they return: I went to Holland and quickly restored the Dutch language. Therefore, if you count all the languages ​​with which I am familiar at different levels of knowledge, then there are at least 400 of them. But I actively speak only 20.



Do you feel your uniqueness?
- No, I know a lot of people who already know several dozen languages. For example, 80-year-old Australian professor Stephen Wurm knows more languages ​​than me. And speaks fluently at thirty.
- Collecting languages ​​- for the sake of sports interest?
- We must distinguish between linguists and polyglots. Polyglots are people who specialize in absorbing an enormous number of languages. And if you are engaged in science, then language is not an end in itself, but a working tool. My main activity is comparing language families with each other. To do this, it is not necessary to speak every language, but you need to keep in your memory colossal information about roots, grammar, and the origin of words.



Are you still learning languages?
- In 1993, there was an expedition to the Yenisei, they studied the Ket language - an endangered one, 200 people speak it. I had to teach him. But I learned the bulk of the languages ​​at school and university. From the 5th grade, for five years at the Olympiads at Moscow State University, I was a prize-winner: I could write on a proposal in 15 Indo-European languages. At the university, he taught mainly oriental.
POLYGLOTS ARE BORN.



Are they born with the ability for languages ​​or is this achieved through the efforts of constant training?
- I thought about it a lot. Naturally, this is heredity: I have a lot of polyglots in my family. My father was a well-known translator, edited Doctor Zhivago and knew several dozen languages. My elder brother, a philosopher, is also a great polyglot. The elder sister is a translator. My son, a student, knows at least a hundred languages. The only family member who is not into languages ​​is the youngest son, but he is a good programmer.
- But how is a person able to store such an array of information in memory?
- And I, paradoxically, have a very bad memory: I do not remember phone numbers, addresses, I can never find a second time the place where I have already been. My first language, German, was very difficult for me. I spent a lot of energy just memorizing words. In my pockets I always carried cards with the words - on one side in German, on the other - in Russian, so that on the way in the bus I could check myself. And by the end of school, I trained my memory.
I remember that in the first year of the university we were on an expedition to Sakhalin and studied the Nivkh language there, which is also dying out. I went there without preliminary preparation and just like that, on a dare, I learned the Nivkh dictionary. Not all, of course, 30,000 words, but most.
- In general, how much time do you need to learn a language?



Three weeks. Although the eastern ones, of course, are much harder. It took a year and a half to learn Japanese. I taught him at the university for a whole year, the grades were excellent, but one day I picked up a Japanese newspaper and realized that I could not read anything. I got angry - and learned it on my own over the summer.
- Do you have your own learning system?
- I am skeptical about all systems. I just take the textbook and teach from start to finish. It takes about two weeks. Then - in different ways. You can tell yourself that you have become familiar with this language and, if necessary, you will take it from the shelf and activate it. There were many such languages ​​in my practice. If the language is needed and interesting, then you need to read the literature further. I have never used linguaphone courses. To speak well, you need a native speaker. And the best thing is to go to the country and live there for a year.



What ancient languages ​​do you know?
- Latin, ancient Greek, Sanskrit, ancient Japanese, Hurrian language, in which in the II century BC. NS. spoke in ancient Anatolia.
- And how do you manage to remember dead languages ​​- there is no one to talk to?
- I'm reading. There are 2-3 texts left from the Hurrian. There are languages ​​from which two or three dozen words have survived.
HOW ADAM AND EVE SPEAKED.



You are looking for the proto-language of humanity. Do you think that once all the people of the world spoke the same language?
- We are going to discover and prove - all languages ​​were one, and then disintegrated in the thirtieth-twentieth century BC.
Language is a means of communication and is transmitted as an information code from generation to generation, therefore errors and interferences are bound to accumulate in it. We teach our children without noticing that they are already speaking a little bit in another language. In their speech there are more subtle differences from the speech of the elders. Language changes inevitably. It takes 100-200 years - this is a completely different language. If the speakers of the same language once went in different directions, then in a thousand years two different languages ​​will appear.
And we have to find out if 6,000 modern languages, including dialects, starting point? We are gradually moving from modern languages ​​to ancient ones. It's like linguistic paleontology - step by step we reconstruct sounds and words, approaching the proto-languages. And now the stage has come when it is possible to bring together several large language families, of which there are now about ten in the world. And then the task is to restore the proto-languages ​​of these macrofamilies and see if they can be brought together and reconstructed a single language that Adam and Eve may have spoken.



ONLY CAN WANT IN RUSSIA.
- Which language is the most difficult and which is the easiest?
- The grammar is easier in English, Chinese. I learned Esperanto in an hour and a half. Difficult to learn - Sanskrit and Ancient Greek. But the most difficult language on earth is Abkhazian. Russian - medium. It is difficult for foreigners to assimilate only because of the complex alternation of consonants (hand-pen) and stress.
- Are many languages ​​dying?
- All languages ​​in the Urals and beyond the Urals, Nivkh and Ket are from the Yenisei family. In North America, they are dying out by the dozen. Terrible process.
- What is your attitude to profanity? Is it rubbish?
- These words are no different from other words. The comparative linguist is used to dealing with the names of the genitals in any language. English expressions are significantly poorer than Russian ones. Japanese is much less clogged with swear words: it is more polite people.



Sergey Anatolyevich Starostin (March 24, 1953, Moscow - September 30, 2005, Moscow) - an outstanding Russian linguist, polyglot, specialist in the field of comparative studies, oriental studies, Caucasian studies and Indo-European studies. The son of the writer, translator, polyglot Anatoly Starostin, brother of the philosopher and historian of science Boris Starostin. Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Department of Literature and Language (Linguistics). Head of the Center for Comparative Studies at the Institute of Oriental Cultures and Antiquity of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Doctor of Leiden University (Netherlands).

If you are going to devote time to learning English, French or Chinese, you have no idea what a powerful positive effect this will have on your mind.

This experience can completely change you. Factrum publishes some compelling arguments.

Everything more Research confirms that people who speak more than one language have more flexible and developed thinking. They are smarter, more creative, and better at controlling their feelings and emotions.

When we can easily talk to foreigners in their native language, we can perceive this world in a different way, as is typical for them. The importance and value of different points of view is revealed to us. We suddenly begin to notice things that are not available to others. Language is a whole world, another universe with its own rules, times, colors and perception.

People who speak more than one language think much faster and find the right solutions more often.

The New York Times talks about several studies conducted with people of different ages - all of them about how much learning a new language improves brain activity.

A study from the American National Academy Sciences, talks about the cognitive success of 7-month-old babies with whom parents speak in different languages... Children who grew up in families with parents from different countries, develop faster, learn better and perfectly adapt to new circumstances.

Another study, which involved more than 40 elderly bilingual people, showed that knowledge of two languages ​​or more significantly slows down the aging of the brain and reliably protects against dementia and Alzheimer's.

Scientists explain the phenomenon as follows: the brain is a muscle, and the study of a foreign language and its periodic use in everyday life is an excellent exercise for it. The more you study, the more flexible your brain is and the longer it stays clear.

If you can think in two languages, it allows you to "look out of the box" of familiar perception.

While this is obvious, research has also been done on this topic. If you master a foreign language, you will inevitably become a creative person. Psychology Today writes that knowing a second language will make it easier and faster to find solutions to complex intellectual problems and more often to be creative in work.

Medical Daily reports on the results of a study in which 120 students took part: bilinguals are better at coping with tasks in morphology, syntax, and with creative essays.

“We have found that there are clear advantages to bilinguals. They speak and write better in their native language. They are better at solving arithmetic problems. They solve everyday problems more effectively and are able to think creatively. Not only do they have better vocabulary: they UNDERSTAND the meaning of words, not just know them. This allows them to see and experience the world on a deeper intuitive level. ”- Dr. Fraser Lochlan, lead author of this study.

If children are fluent in several languages ​​from an early age, then they better understand various ideas and concepts, and are better able to think globally. Knowing two languages ​​is like having two "creative" divisions in the brain. One of them is not used by most people.

Elite Daily author Chris Riotta says that although he grew up in the United States in an English-speaking family, he also knows Spanish since childhood, because his father is an emigrant from Argentina. This allowed him to understand different cultures and communities from childhood, to better understand himself and to reveal his creative abilities.

“I can express myself better than most other people.” - Chris Riotta.

Being proficient in two languages ​​will allow you to better understand people and what is going on in their hearts.

Bilinguals are the best communicators. Susan Erwin-Tripp of the University of California (Department of Psychology) has been studying how knowledge of several languages ​​affects a person and his behavior for many years. Here's what she says:

“When we find ourselves in situations that require us to communicate in a foreign language, our values ​​and feelings do change for a while. Some bilinguals even say that they have two personalities at once, between which they can 'switch' when thinking. "

And she's right. We do not know if it is possible, if you learn another language, to live two lives at once, but this experience will definitely allow you to better understand people who are different from yourself. Empathize with them.

Language choice can even be used as a tool to change our attitudes towards morality, our beliefs, and even our hobbies.

Also, knowledge of several languages ​​helps us to better understand ourselves. Of course, this ultimately makes us more relaxed and confident.

Anyone who speaks two languages ​​knows the importance and value of this skill. Become one of them!

In general, he says that he knows "only" 100. But he is being modest. In the course of the conversation, we calculated that Sergei Anatolyevich - head of the department of the Russian University for the Humanities, Doctor of Philology, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences - is familiar with at least 400 languages, taking into account the ancients and languages ​​of small endangered peoples. It takes him only three weeks to learn the language. Among colleagues, this 43-year-old professor has a reputation as a "walking encyclopedia". But at the same time he is distinguished by ... a bad memory.

The most difficult question for me is: "How many languages ​​do you know?" Because it is impossible to answer it exactly. Even 10 languages ​​cannot be known equally. You may know 500 - 600 words and be perfectly able to communicate in the country. For example, I know English perfectly, because I have to travel and talk all the time. But I think that my German is better in passive. And you can speak badly, but read well. For example, I read ancient Chinese classics better than most Chinese. Or you may not read or speak, but know the structure, grammar. I cannot speak Negidal or Nanai, but I remember their vocabulary well. Many languages ​​become passive, but then, if necessary, they return: I went to Holland and quickly restored the Dutch language. Therefore, if you count all the languages ​​with which I am familiar at different levels of knowledge, then there are at least 400 of them. But I actively speak only 20.

Do you feel your uniqueness?
- No, I know a lot of people who already know several dozen languages. For example, 80-year-old Australian professor Stephen Wurm knows more languages ​​than me. And speaks fluently at thirty.
- Collecting languages ​​- for the sake of sports interest?
- We must distinguish between linguists and polyglots. Polyglots are people who specialize in absorbing an enormous number of languages. And if you are engaged in science, then language is not an end in itself, but a working tool. My main activity is comparing language families with each other. To do this, it is not necessary to speak every language, but you need to keep in your memory colossal information about roots, grammar, and the origin of words.

Are you still learning languages?
- In 1993, there was an expedition to the Yenisei, they studied the Ket language - an endangered one, 200 people speak it. I had to teach him. But I learned the bulk of the languages ​​at school and university. From the 5th grade, for five years at the Olympiads at Moscow State University, I was a prize-winner: I could write on a proposal in 15 Indo-European languages. At the university, he taught mainly oriental.

POLYGLOTS ARE BORN.

Are they born with the ability for languages ​​or is this achieved through the efforts of constant training?
- I thought about it a lot. Naturally, this is heredity: I have a lot of polyglots in my family. My father was a well-known translator, edited Doctor Zhivago and knew several dozen languages. My elder brother, a philosopher, is also a great polyglot. The elder sister is a translator. My son, a student, knows at least a hundred languages. The only family member who is not into languages ​​is the youngest son, but he is a good programmer.
- But how is a person able to store such an array of information in memory?
- And I, paradoxically, have a very bad memory: I don't remember phone numbers, addresses, I can never find a second time the place I’ve already been to. My first language, German, was very difficult for me. I spent a lot of energy just memorizing words. In my pockets I always carried cards with the words - on one side in German, on the other - in Russian, so that on the way to the bus I could check myself. And by the end of school, I trained my memory.
I remember that in the first year of the university we were on an expedition to Sakhalin and studied the Nivkh language there, which is also dying out. I went there without preliminary preparation and just like that, on a dare, I learned the Nivkh dictionary. Not all, of course, 30,000 words, but most.
- In general, how much time do you need to learn a language?

Three weeks. Although the eastern ones, of course, are much harder. It took a year and a half to learn Japanese. I taught him at the university for a whole year, the grades were excellent, but one day I picked up a Japanese newspaper and realized that I could not read anything. I got angry - and learned it on my own over the summer.
- Do you have your own learning system?
- I am skeptical about all systems. I just take the textbook and teach from start to finish. It takes about two weeks. Then - in different ways. You can tell yourself that you have become familiar with this language and if it becomes necessary, you will take it from the shelf and activate it. There were many such languages ​​in my practice. If the language is necessary and interesting, then you need to read the literature further. I have never used linguaphone courses. To speak well, you need a native speaker. And the best thing is to go to the country and live there for a year.

What ancient languages ​​do you know?
- Latin, ancient Greek, Sanskrit, ancient Japanese, Hurrian language, which in the II century BC. NS. spoke in ancient Anatolia.
- And how do you manage to remember dead languages ​​- there is no one to talk to?
- I'm reading. There are 2-3 texts left from the Hurrian. There are languages ​​from which two or three dozen words have survived.

HOW ADAM AND EVE SPEAKED.

You are looking for the proto-language of humanity. Do you think that once all the people of the world spoke the same language?
- We are going to discover and prove - all languages ​​were one, and then disintegrated in the thirtieth-twentieth century BC.
Language is a means of communication and is transmitted as an information code from generation to generation, therefore errors and interferences are bound to accumulate in it. We teach our children without noticing that they are already speaking a little bit in another language. In their speech there are more subtle differences from the speech of the elders. Language changes inevitably. It takes 100-200 years - this is a completely different language. If the speakers of the same language once went in different directions, then in a thousand years two different languages ​​will appear.
And we have to find out - did 6,000 modern languages, including dialects, have a starting point? We are gradually moving from modern languages ​​to ancient ones. It's like linguistic paleontology - step by step we reconstruct sounds and words, approaching the proto-languages. And now the stage has come when it is possible to bring together several large language families, of which there are now about ten in the world. And then the task is to restore the proto-languages ​​of these macrofamilies and see if they can be brought together and reconstructed a single language that Adam and Eve may have spoken.

ONLY CAN WANT IN RUSSIA.

Which language is the most difficult and which is the easiest?
- The grammar is easier in English, Chinese. I learned Esperanto in an hour and a half. Difficult to learn - Sanskrit and Ancient Greek. But the most difficult language on earth is Abkhazian. Russian - medium. It is difficult for foreigners to assimilate only because of the complex alternation of consonants (hand-pen) and stress.
- Are many languages ​​dying?
- All languages ​​in the Urals and beyond the Urals, Nivkh and Ket are from the Yenisei family. In North America, they are dying out by the dozen. Terrible process.
- What is your attitude to profanity? Is it rubbish?
- These words are no different from other words. The comparative linguist is used to dealing with the names of the genitals in any language. English expressions are significantly poorer than Russian ones. Japanese is much less clogged with swear words: it is more polite people.

Sergey Anatolyevich Starostin (March 24, 1953, Moscow - September 30, 2005, Moscow) - an outstanding Russian linguist, polyglot, specialist in comparative studies, oriental studies, Caucasian studies and Indo-European studies. The son of the writer, translator, polyglot Anatoly Starostin, brother of the philosopher and historian of science Boris Starostin. Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences for the Department of Literature and Language (Linguistics). Head of the Center for Comparative Studies at the Institute of Oriental Cultures and Antiquity of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Honorary Doctor of Leiden University (Netherlands).

Who among the polyglots around the world knows (or knew) the most languages?

According to the academic vocabulary foreign words, POLYGLOT (from the Greek polyglottos - "multilingual") - a person who speaks many languages.
Legend has it that Buddha spoke one and a half hundred languages, and Mohammed knew all the languages ​​of the world. The most famous polyglot of the past, whose abilities are attested quite reliably, lived in the last century - the curator of the Vatican library, Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (1774 - 1849)

Mezzofanti was legendary during his lifetime. In addition to the main European languages, he knew Estonian, Latvian, Georgian, Armenian, Albanian, Kurdish, Turkish, Persian and many others. It is believed that he translated from one hundred and fourteen languages ​​and seventy-two "dialects", as well as from several dozen dialects. He spoke sixty languages ​​fluently, wrote poems and epigrams in almost fifty. At the same time, the cardinal never traveled outside Italy and studied this unthinkable number of languages ​​on his own.
It's hard to believe in such miracles. Moreover, the Guinness Book of Records claims that Mezzofanti was fluent in only twenty-six or twenty-seven languages.

Among foreign linguists, the greatest polyglot was apparently Rasmus Christian Rusk, professor at the University of Copenhagen. He spoke two hundred and thirty languages ​​and compiled dictionaries and grammars of several dozen of them.

In Great Britain, the consummate polyglot today can be considered the journalist Harold Williams, who knows eighty languages. Interestingly, Harold learned Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French and German when he was only eleven years old.

A new volume of the Guinness Book of Records has just been released on English language... The most important polyglot on the planet in 1997 is recognized as forty-year-old Ziyad Fawzi, a Brazilian of Lebanese descent who speaks fifty-eight languages. Despite his outstanding ability, Senor Fawzi is an eminently humble man. Modestly teaches foreign languages ​​at the University of São Paulo. Translates modestly. Any of fifty-eight languages. And he wants to translate from a hundred. And - from any to any. He is currently preparing textbooks for publication in several languages ​​using his method fast assimilation material.

The most amazing of our polyglots is Willy Melnikova. Its story is simple and incredible at the same time. The guy was sent to Afghan war... Further, as in the movie "The Diamond Arm": fell, woke up - a plaster cast ... Willie came out of a coma as a different person. But instead of diamonds, he got something more expensive - unlimited access to the world linguistic "Internet". Since then, Willie has studied several languages ​​every year. Although "studying" is not quite the right word to describe what is happening. Eyewitnesses say: "The languages ​​seem to come to him." Willie looks attentively at a person speaking an unfamiliar dialect, listens to his speech, then as if tunes in, trying different registers, and suddenly, like a receiver, "catches the wave" and gives out a clear speech without interference ...

How many languages ​​Melnikov actually knows is unknown. Every time an experiment is conducted to study his method, Willie meets with the speaker of another unique dialect. After the conversation, his personal "linguistic" asset is replenished with a new language ... "This is no longer a method, but something beyond," the scientists say.