#hyperpolyglot

The New York Times: The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 Languages | by Jessica Contrera | April 5, 2022

This is a great article and video about  46-year-old Vaughn Smith, who works as a carpet cleaner and is a hyperpolyglot* who speaks 24 languages and has some basic knowledge about many more. 

As a child growing up in Maryland, Vaughn (who has a Mexican mother and an American father) felt different and left out. He discovered that learning languages was a way he could connect with others, especially when he moved to Washington, DC and met international children attending school in DC.

Vaughn’s language learning was helped by the fact that he could recall nearly “perfectly" anything he read, so he could take advantage of language books. It also helped that he was “muy, muy intelligente,” based on a psychologist’s assessment of a young Vaughn’s cognitive abilities.

This article describes the process that Vaughn went through to have his brain studied by MIT neuroscientist Evelina Fedorenko, Ph.D. Below are some excerpts from the article by Jessica Contrera (who also had her brain scanned) and some gifs from the above video to illustrate the process that Dr. Fedorenko used to study Vaughn’s brain.

In the years Vaughn spent amassing languages, a Russian-born neuroscientist named Evelina Fedorenko was here at one of the world’s most renowned universities, studying...people with advanced language skills. What distinguishes polyglots and hyperpolyglots from the rest of us? [emphasis added]

Dr. Fedorenko invited Vaughn Smith and reporter Jessica Contrera to come to MIT and have their brains scanned. While Vaughn was having his brain scanned, he read English words, watched “blue squares move around” and listened to both familiar and unfamiliar languages. Meanwhile, the fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scan was taking “three-dimensional images” of Vaughn’s brain, divided “into two-centimeter cubes” at “two second” intervals. 

The images showed the “amount of blood oxygen” in each of the cubes when “the language processing areas are activated,” thus delineating a precise map of the areas of Vaughn’s brain that he uses to process various languages.

The results of the fMRI scans of Vaughn and Jessica showed “two colorful maps” of their brains--but those maps were different than Jessica expected: 

I’d assumed that Vaughn’s language areas would be massive and highly active, and mine pathetically puny. But the scans showed the opposite: the parts of Vaughn’s brain used to comprehend language are far smaller and quieter than mine. Even when we are reading the same words in English, I am using more of my brain and working harder than he ever has to. [emphasis added]

This matches what the researchers have found in other hyperpolyglots they’ve scanned.

“Vaughn needs less oxygen to be sent to those regions of his brain that process language when he is speaking in his native language,” [PhD candidate Saima] Malik-Moraleda explains. “He uses language so much, he’s become really efficient in using those areas for the production of language.” [emphasis added.

Jessica Contrara pondered the origin of Vaughn’s abilities:

It’s possible that Vaughn was born with his language areas being smaller and more efficient. It’s possible that his brain started out like mine, but because he learned so many languages while it was still developing, his dedication transformed his anatomy. It could be both. Until researchers can scan language learners as they grow, there’s no way to know for sure. [emphasis added]

I think that Vaughn’s ability is probably a combination of nature and nurture. Certainly, there is evidence that Vaughn had some innate cognitive abilities [e.g., a nearly eidetic (i.e. photographic) memory for visual stimuli and superior intelligence at a young age (based on the “muy, muy intelligente” assessment of a psychologist)]. 

However, Vaughn was also motivated to learn multiple languages, and worked hard to do so, which undoubtedly did affect his brain’s development. In fact, Vaughn still sets aside time each day to learn new languages--currently he is working on Welsh using the Duolingo app.

All Vaughn’s hard work to learn languages appears to have finally paid off, at least in terms of Vaughn finally learning to appreciate himself:

At our gate, I ask how he is feeling. He is thinking about the way the Harvard and MIT neuroscientists spent the day asking him questions. Not just for their research, but because they want to understand how, in their own language learning, they could be more like him.

“It’s really comforting,” Vaughn says. “I always wonder, it’s like, how do I compare on the larger scale? What if this is really nothing to be excited about?”

But they’d been excited, and now, he could be too.

______________________

*The author of this article defines hyperpolyglots as people who “can speak 11 languages or more” (based on a definition by Michael Erard).

Tbh I wonder if this sudden interest in being a hyperpolyglot is Duolingo culture? Because sometimes I think people don’t really have a concept of what it means to speak a language. 

First of all, there’s a huge difference between basic and intermediate. Basic level is ‘My name is Frog, where is the station?’ and then panic because you don’t understand the answer. Intermediate is more or less a B2, which means you can speak on the phone with a colleague and discuss any issue he’s having.

Second, speaking ‘twenty languages’ - even at a basic level - involves a shitton of work, time and money, and is not be a realistic goal for everyone. Like, if by ‘speaking 20 languages at a basic level’ you mean ‘play around on Duolingo and XP the shit out of as many languages as I can’ - why not. We all need hobbies, and it’s certainly better for your brain to learn Klingon than to watch reality TV or fight with weird relatives on Facebook. But completing a Duolingo tree doesn’t mean all that much. Languages need IRL practice, or they get lost. That’s a problem even for professional interpreters - you need to do something every day or you start losing stuff, and you need a lot of variety - different speakers, expressions, register, accents, topics...

Third, speaking ‘three or four languages’ fluently is a hell of an achievement, and certainly more than enough for anyone.

Hyperpolyglots do exist, but it’s generally some kind of innate talent coupled with an unhealthy obsession. If you learn ten languages, you don’t do anything else. You don’t read for pleasure, don’t practice sports or hobbies, don’t take the time to build human relationships. A majority of those newly popular ‘Youtube hyperployglots’ are idiots or frauds who can’t express anything beyond ‘The cat is on the table’, because that’s how humans are built: our ability to learn languages easily and well is basically over when we’re six months old, and after that, our brains need to make it a priority if we want to learn at all.

If you want my opinion, we should all focus on our own native language a lot more. Most people have an active knowledge of 500 words, and struggle to understand complex or antiquated texts. I hear complaints every day about university students (university! students!) who can’t write a basic essay or switch register as required or understand anything that’s intricately written or more than 100 years old. So start there. Explore your own language, learn your grammar well, discover new words, watch old movies, get an ear for regional accents, read all kinds of books.