Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/573

Rh named who uses Spanish, French, Mandarin, Chinese, Japanese, Italian and English. Of another it is said that he preaches in Burmese, German, English, Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Danish, French and Quechua. When one visits an auction-room on the continent of Europe at a point where several languages are spoken and prospective buyers arrive from all parts of the world, he may hear the auctioneer drop one language and take up another until all present have heard in their own tongue what the goods are and the bids. One also meets on the trains traveling salesmen who speak several languages with almost equal fluency. Cardinal Mezzofanti, who died in 1849, spoke fifty-eight languages and knew fairly well about fifty more. He was a man of very ordinary ability except that he had a singularly tenacious memory of an unusual kind, so that when he once heard a speech-sound he never forgot it. About twenty years ago there was an employee in one of the London offices who was able to receive and to send telegrams in twelve different languages. But he soon gave himself up to drink and became so unreliable that the company felt obliged to discharge him. The testimony regarding fluent speakers in several languages must be received with great caution. It is almost always exaggerated, usually very much exaggerated. While there is virtually no limit to the number of languages one may learn to read rapidly and intelligently, their oral use is almost infinitely more difficult. I have taken careful notes for many years and am convinced that not half a dozen men in a generation can speak even three languages simultaneously with native purity. Some years ago a lady informed me that a friend of hers spoke eight languages as well as if each one was his native tongue. I happened to know that the man himself makes no such preposterous claim. I once made the acquaintance of a young Swiss whom I asked what his native dialect was. He replied that he did not know, since he had been brought up to speak German, French, and Italian. As his English was correct and fluent, although he had been in this country only a few years, he probably told the truth. But his pronunciation betrayed the foreigner in every sentence. Many years ago I was making a foot-tour through the Black Forest with a fellow American. Among other things he informed me that he spoke German like a native. Presently we came to a farmhouse at which he asked for some milk. But he gave the word a wrong gender. An ignorant native might have made a mistake in the grammatical structure of his sentence, or he might have had a local pronunciation, but no native would have made a blunder in the gender of this word, since it is not one of those of which the spoken and the written gender differ. It needs to be remarked, however, that the local dialects vary so widely from each other and from the language