A MAN OF TONGUES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 138, 8 December 1938, Page 16

A MAN OF TONGUES

MEZZORftffITS RECORD

Do you know Mezzofanti? asks the "Cape Times." Or he may have been before your time, for he was born at Bologna in 1774. A carpenter's son, he would probably have died a carpenter had not a priest discovered his amazing memory. There is abundant proof that Mezzofanti had one of the most amazing memories any man has ever been blessed with, and he made good use of it. A

Languages were child's play to him. Sent to Bologna's university, he mastered Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, Greek, Arabic, French, German, and Swedish before he finished his course. And he did it without any trouble —French without tears, indeed. Two years after Waterloo —he was then a little more than forty—he knew twenty languages, and ty.-ee years later he knew thirtytwo.

When he knew a language he knew it perfectly. He could read it and write it and speak it. He knew its idioms. He was conversant with its queer turns of speech, its odd expressions. He could write a perfect conversational letter.

He went on to add Dutch and Danish, Russian, 'Polish, Bohemian, Bulgarian ... on and on till he knew every language in Europe, and added Coptic and Abyssinian, Amharic, Angolese, Syrian, and Chinese, and others, till he knew at least seventy before he died in March,' 1849.

What is more, he knew variations of languages—he knew the Yorkshire dialect as well as the King's English; he could slip into patois. He could speak the rude jargon of the Black Forest and the classic German of Dresden.