"Babel No More," by Michael Erard
Jeff Glor talks to Michael Erard about "Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners."
Jeff Glor: What inspired you to write the book?
Michael Erard: A fascinating discussion on a linguistics listserv in 2004 sparked my interest. People were talking about who the person who spoke the most languages might be and disagreeing whether or not this was a real phenomenon. It turned out that no one had seriously asked what the upper limit of the ability to speak, learn, and use languages might be. I realized: given the way the world is changing, we need polyglots. We need to understand what they can do and how, because it's relevant to us all.
ME: What surprised me most during the research stage were finding some items in the archives of Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti in Bologna which had never been described before. I'm talking really interesting things that may explain some of how he could learn a lot of languages -- some say it was 72. (It was much lower, but still a lot.) What surprised me later in writing and editing was how much I could actually get done as the parent of a newborn. Not a huge amount but more than I thought.
ME: If I weren't writing this book I would be working full-time at my day job as a senior researcher and metaphor designer at a nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C.
ME: I'm going back to Roberto Bolano's "Savage Detectives." I picked up Robert Coles's "The Politics of Children" for a buck and have been reading that. Also "Raising a Son" by Don and Jeanne Elium. I will tell you I'm looking forward to reading reviews of the Cloud Atlas movie, and if they're any good, I'll definitely be seeing that.
ME: I'm going to regroup and try to figure that out. I love writing in and around language, and I'd love to try my hand at screenwriting, too.
For more on "Babel No More," visit the Simon and Schuster website.
