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Fictional Polyglots

 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots Post Reply
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seldnar
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7135 days ago

189 posts - 287 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek

 
 Message 65 of 82
13 May 2011 at 11:07am | IP Logged 
Lianne wrote:

Walowitz can definitely speak Mandarin, because there was one episode where he tried to
teach Sheldon Mandarin so he could yell at the guy at the Chinese food place. It didn't
work out so well. :P


Here's an interesting discussion of Walowitz's Mandrin abilities along with those of his
student. sheldons-chinese">Sheldon Speaks Chinese
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Gorgoll2
Senior Member
Brazil
veritassword.blogspo
Joined 5149 days ago

159 posts - 192 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*

 
 Message 66 of 82
14 August 2011 at 1:56am | IP Logged 
Lemuel Gulliver from Gulliver´s Travels speaks English, German, Dutch, Latin, French,
Spanish, Italian and Mediterranean Lingua Franca - And understood Portuguese.
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Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
Joined 6871 days ago

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

 
 Message 67 of 82
14 August 2011 at 11:23am | IP Logged 
Gorgoll2 wrote:
Lemuel Gulliver from Gulliver´s Travels speaks English, German, Dutch, Latin, French,
Spanish, Italian and Mediterranean Lingua Franca - And understood Portuguese.


Not to mention the languages he learned in his travels; Swift didn't have his characters from the exotic lands speak English, which I really enjoyed.
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Jake Day
Newbie
United States
Joined 5032 days ago

30 posts - 35 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 68 of 82
16 August 2011 at 3:04am | IP Logged 
Two guys I remember from different series;

1) Dr. Daniel Jackson from the Stargate franchise. I recall in one episode of the TV show that he claimed to
speak 27 or 29 different languages, although he never mentioned which ones. I do recall hearing a conversation
partially in German in that same episode.

2) John Doe from the short-lived FOX series John Doe. I recall the opening of the first episode had him
speaking Khmer with a bunch of fishermen. According to the storyline, he "knew everything"--this presumably
included several languages.
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Ikarias
Triglot
Newbie
Spain
multilinguae.wordpreRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6034 days ago

29 posts - 36 votes
Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, GermanB1
Studies: ItalianA2, DutchA2, FrenchA2, Mandarin

 
 Message 69 of 82
28 September 2011 at 1:15pm | IP Logged 
What about Salvatore, from "Il nome della rosa"? He speaks and mixes Latin, German, French, Italian, English and Spanish (I think).
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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6275 days ago

1936 posts - 2333 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 70 of 82
10 October 2011 at 6:53pm | IP Logged 
Pascali in the novel Pascali's Island, which is set on an island in the late Ottoman Empire. He is fluent in English, Turkish, Greek and French, and may know Latin and other languages as well.
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Journeyer
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
tristan85.blogspot.c
Joined 6871 days ago

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

 
 Message 71 of 82
30 June 2012 at 11:27pm | IP Logged 
Dusting off this thread a bit, I just finished reading a "Da Vinci Code" rip-off called "The Atlantis Code" by someone named Charles Brokaw.

The book was ho-hum, but exciting enough to keep me engaged. However, the kicker for me was that the protagonist, a Prof. Lourds, is a linguist from Harvard who specializes in ancient languages, but for whom, as mentioned in the book, has seldom visited a land where he couldn't already communicate.

In the book he uses English, Arabic, Italian, Russian, Yoruba, French (I think), Ge'ez, Coptic (I think as well), German, Cherokee (or at least shows a knowledge of it) and learns to read inscriptions in the Atlantean language, the proto pre-Tower of Babel language, in around a month's time.

That job would be so awesome. I can't say I'd recommend the book, but it at least did re-awaken my desire to look at ancient languages, namely Old English, Akkadian, Coptic, Aramaic, Middle Egyptian, and maybe some Latin.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6600 days ago

9753 posts - 15779 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 72 of 82
01 July 2012 at 1:03am | IP Logged 
ReneeMona wrote:
If I remember correctly, Albus Dumbledore and Barty Crouch sr. from the Harry Potter books were both impressive polyglots, speaking over two hundred languages including Mermish, Gobbledegook and Bulgarian.
And Parseltongue! \m/
One of my favourite moments of the whole series was when Ron imitated it.

I'm not so sure about Crouch's actual skills though. Our source of this info is what Percy and Bagman say.

It's remarkable how little attention is given to language learning in the books. They could have magical means to learn them but they don't >_< JKR isn't even quite monolingual; she used to live in Portugal and she famously based many incantations on Latin. Is it an exception similar to not being to produce food out of nothing?


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