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Fictional Polyglots

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
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iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5261 days ago

2241 posts - 6731 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

 
 Message 41 of 82
09 March 2011 at 3:55am | IP Logged 
Has anyone heard of Manse Everard, of The Time Patrol series by Poul Anderson? They were Sci-Fi novels from the early 1990's. Manse was a 20th century man recruited to the time patrol by our descendants from a far off future to protect certain nexus points of history from tampering. Manse could speak any language from any time period by taking a "hypno" of the language overnight and waking up fluent in whatever language he needed to have fluency and whatever relevant time period. It just wouldn't be appropriate to speak 20th century French in 18th century France or modern Greek in 5th century Greece.

There are stories where he returns from the past to his "present" in the 20th century to find that history has been altered and that Celts are driving steam powered cars in "New York" and speaking an odd Celtic mix language or other scenarios with "English" minus all Latin influence.

The books and short stories are a fun and fascinating romp through "what if".

Edited by iguanamon on 09 March 2011 at 3:57am

1 person has voted this message useful



portunhol
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
thelinguistblogger.w
Joined 6251 days ago

198 posts - 299 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: German, Arabic (classical)

 
 Message 42 of 82
10 March 2011 at 11:37pm | IP Logged 
iguanamon wrote:
Has anyone heard of Manse Everard, of The Time Patrol series by Poul Anderson...Manse could speak any language from any time period by taking a "hypno" of the language overnight and waking up fluent in whatever language he needed to have fluency and whatever relevant time period. It just wouldn't be appropriate to speak 20th century French in 18th century France or modern Greek in 5th century Greece...


I think it's cool that at least the author addresses the language problem, like in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe. It reminds the reader that being able to communicate with people from different regions of the world, and time periods, would be impossible without either a lot of previous study or a science-fiction solution like a hypno pill or a babble fish.
1 person has voted this message useful



Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
Joined 6867 days ago

946 posts - 1110 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German
Studies: Sign Language

 
 Message 43 of 82
13 March 2011 at 9:22pm | IP Logged 
In the movie "Atlantis" the main character Milo is a linguist and speaks several languages. I forget which ones exactly though. I remember French and English, of course.

The Atlateaean language is a functioning, although limited, constructed language created my Marc Okrand, the same linguist who created the Klingon language
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Anya
Pentaglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5792 days ago

636 posts - 708 votes 
Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish
Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin
Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi

 
 Message 44 of 82
18 April 2011 at 5:05pm | IP Logged 
Rubin from Solzhenitsyn’s “The First Circle”: he studies dictionaries (Mongol-Finnish, Spanish-Arabic, Chinese-French, Latvian-Hungarian, Russian-Sanskrit) to prove that all the words come from the word “hand”
1 person has voted this message useful



Splog
Diglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
anthonylauder.c
Joined 5668 days ago

1062 posts - 3263 votes 
Speaks: English*, Czech
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 45 of 82
18 April 2011 at 5:56pm | IP Logged 
Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC
KCB KCIE (1822–1915) was a highly accomplished polyglot, who spoke a large number of
languages, with the ability to converse in a new language in a matter of weeks and be
fluent in a few months. He attributed all of his great success to his three natural
talents: horsemanship, facility with foreign languages, and fornication
3 persons have voted this message useful



ReneeMona
Diglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 5334 days ago

864 posts - 1274 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2
Studies: French

 
 Message 46 of 82
28 April 2011 at 12:28am | IP Logged 
It’s been a while since I read the Twilight books, but I think Edward Cullen once claimed to know dozens of languages and ascribed this to his not needing sleep and having a perfect memory (and then there's the eternal lifespan). Not only did this make the character about ten times more fascinating to me, it also made me reconsider the attraction of vampirism. I think I’d gladly give up my non-sparkly skin and blunt teeth in exchange for those powers.
1 person has voted this message useful



patuco
Diglot
Moderator
Gibraltar
Joined 7014 days ago

3795 posts - 4268 votes 
Speaks: Spanish, English*
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 47 of 82
29 April 2011 at 12:43am | IP Logged 
Personally, I'd rather live for a long time without requiring vampirism, but each to their own.
2 persons have voted this message useful



clumsy
Octoglot
Senior Member
Poland
lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5177 days ago

1116 posts - 1367 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish
Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi

 
 Message 48 of 82
05 May 2011 at 7:27pm | IP Logged 
In Korean drama The fugitive the speak several foreign language: Korean (of course), English, Japanese, Cantonese, Thai and maybe Tagalog and Chinese, the guy is kind of Korean James Bond.


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