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Hrachia Acharian

  Tags: Armenian | Polyglot
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ProfArguelles
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foreignlanguageexper
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 Message 1 of 8
26 March 2005 at 11:06pm | IP Logged 
There is a site called "constipated wombats and the world's greatest polylgots":

Constipated Wombats

This site provides a short link to an Armenian professor named Hrachia Acharian who is credited with knowing 562 languages! Does anyone know anything more about this man?


Edited by administrator on 27 March 2005 at 7:39am

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victor
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 Message 2 of 8
26 March 2005 at 11:25pm | IP Logged 
I didn't look into the details of the site. But that example of Chinese was ridiculous. It said "private's pouch bear is bodily wastes"

Thanks for showing us the site, Ardaschir

Edited by victor on 27 March 2005 at 12:30pm

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KingM
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 Message 3 of 8
27 March 2005 at 7:26am | IP Logged 
This site provides a short link to an Armenian professor named Hrachia Acharian who is credited with knowing 562 languages!

This less plausible than Wilt Chamberlain's claim to have slept with 20,000 women during the course of his NBA career.
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Malcolm
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 Message 4 of 8
27 March 2005 at 12:57pm | IP Logged 
Victor: I suspect they did an electronic translation straight from the Japanese. Either that or the translator used a dictionary for each word and assumed that "si1" (watashi) means "I" in Chinese. I don't think it's worth correcting.
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ElComadreja
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 Message 5 of 8
27 March 2005 at 1:04pm | IP Logged 
Armenian language has more than 60 dialects!

So, one can imagine, what a tremendous job did this scholar in his life! He paid a high price for his scientific contribution: at the end of his life, he almost lost his eyesight.


This sounds like cheating to me. Hey I speak English, American English, Canadian English, Indian English, and Ebonics. Hey I'm a polyglot! 0:)
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ProfArguelles
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foreignlanguageexper
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 Message 6 of 8
27 March 2005 at 11:03pm | IP Logged 
This claim does indeed transcend the absurd -- while many linguists and experts in foreign language acquisition would deny that it is possible for anyone to really learn even 5 or 6 languages, and while better-willed credulity based on historical achievement is generally stretched in the range of about 56 languages, this individual has 100x or 10x these numbers attributed to him. However, where there is smoke, there is usually a fire, and I doubt this legend is built completely out of thin air.

Edited by Ardaschir on 31 March 2005 at 12:50am

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guillaume
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 Message 7 of 8
28 March 2005 at 10:11pm | IP Logged 
Well from what I read, he is "the author of the Comprehensive Grammar of the Armenian language in comparison with the 562 (!) languages of the world."

It doesn't mean that he speaks the languages, just that he did a research on the grammar of many languages.

I can talk about some facts of the korean grammar even thought I am far from being able to speak korean (just started it)
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Seth
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 Message 8 of 8
30 March 2005 at 8:19pm | IP Logged 
"THE 562 languages of the world"????

There are more than 562 Earth languages.


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