When God put the kibosh on the Tower of Babel, 72 languages were said to have been created from the one that unified those hubristic humans. In his new book, Babel No More, linguist Michael Erard seeks out the people who have put those pieces back together: hyperpolyglots, i.e., the most fluent mamma-jammas on the [...]
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Michael Erard sets out on the trail of hyperpolyglots in Babel No More: The search for the world's most extraordinary language learners Read Post
Back in 2009 I posted about Michael Erard's Babel No More project ("a book about language superlearners and the upper limits of the human ability to learn and speak languages"); now the book is out (well, it's not actually available... Read Post
Michael Erard, one of LH's favorite journalists because he writes knowledgeably and sensibly about language (not coincidentally, he has an MA in linguistics), is working on Babel No More, "a book about language superlearners and the... Read Post