Page 8 Advertisements Column 3

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21412, 2 March 1935, Page 8

The gift _of acquiring fluency in r3 age V S a rare one > and most p s°P ] . e speak one or two n addition to their native tongue think well of themselves. Mr C. C ?nnr£f ?"' cturer °* board the tourist hner Franconia, which arrived at Auckland last week, is one of these gifted people. The principal European languages apparently presented little difficulty to him, and young man he began to learn v.lf less er-known languages of the fcast. Gradually the number of languages m which he could converse mounted to 16. They inhiS , dial , ects such as that of the head hunters of the Philippine Indi n a dS p nC UI % ; adous castef of W?t a r! Bu t r Batchelder met his Waterloo when he studied Chinese, it was too much for me," he remarked laconically. "I have not the brains to master it. Russian I found the next most difficult language. There are a number of foreigners on board the Franconia who do not understand English sufficiently well to follow Mr Batcheider s lectures in English, so most of his more important lectures he repeats in French,