In Babel No More, Michael Erard, “a monolingual with benefits”, sets
out on a quest to meet language superlearners and make sense of their
mental powers. On the way he uncovers the secrets of historical figures
like the nineteenth-century Italian cardinal Joseph Mezzofanti, who was
said to speak seventy-two languages, as well as those of living
language-superlearners such as Alexander Arguelles, a modern-day
polyglot who knows dozens of languages and shows Erard the tricks of the
trade to give him a dark glimpse into the life of obsessive language
acquisition. With his ambitious examination of what language is, where
it lives in the brain, and the cultural implications of polyglots’
pursuits, Erard explores the upper limits of our ability to learn and
use languages and illuminates the intellectual potential in everyone.
How do some people escape the curse of Babel—and what might the gods
have demanded of them in return?
