The Gift of Tongues

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 145, 2 April 1942, Page 3

The Gift of Tongues

ONSIDER Gertrude Bell’s linguistic prowess. Her excellent education in England — she came of a scholarly and travelled family, and herself took a first-class in History at Oxford-made her mistress of such foreign languages

as French, German and Italian, lan guages she used-in her frequent travels abroad. I’m not sure at what stage of her life she learnt Arabic, but she must have known it well. When she was in Syria she got a Persian to come and teach her his language, though she already had a good knowledge of it. A little later, on a world tour, she spent some time in India, and ¢hose an Indian servant from whom she could learn Hindustani. The same tour brought her to the Far East, where she took lessons in Japanese. And at some time or other she picked up some Turkish. Indeed, wherever she went in her much-travelled life, she seemed to learn the language as a matter of course. Such was the mental equipment — or part of it — possessed by ‘this remarkable woman, Gertrude Bell, who was later to advise, out of her wisdom and her vast stocks of knowledge independently gained, such people as Lawrence of Arabia, high British officials in Cairo and Basra, and the first King of Irak-(" Some Adventurous Women: Gertrude Bell,’ Mar« | Zaret Johnston, 2YA, March 14.) }