Mezzofanti, which opened the cabinet of curiosities where Mezzofanti had been abandoned by science. Russell’s goal was to separate the facts from fantasy, the reality from the myth.
His book is an absolutetreasure, studded with the names of royals and intellectuals, with fascinating whispered asides on every page. At the beginning, Russell devotes 120 pages to describing a menagerie of polyglot scholars, monarchs, missionaries, explorers, and warriors whoknew many languages. Most came from European countries. Mithridates makes an appearance. So does Sir William Jones (1746–1794), a British judgein India and a philologist who said that he knew twenty-eight languages. Part of a chapter discusses infant prodigies and unschooled polyglots, such as the British traveler Tom Coryat (1577–1617), who walked all over Europe and eastern Mediterranean countries, accumulating Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, and probably a dozen other languages he had no use for at home.
Against thisbackdrop, Russell sets Mezzofanti’s monumentalism: “Cardinal Mezzofanti will be found to stand so immeasurably above even the highest of these names . . . that, at least for the purposes of comparison with him, its minor celebrities can possess little claim for consideration,” he wrote.
An enemy of Mezzofanti’s skeptics, Russell contributed to a concrete case for his skill by creating a listof languages that Mezzofanti knew. More important, he lent a sense of order to the reports of firsthand observations. He borrowed a basic framework from William Jones, who had sorted his own twenty-eight languages according to his abilities in each. * The result produced something like the following.
Russell placed fourteen of Mezzofanti’s languages at the lowest level, which meant that he’d studiedthe grammar and vocabulary but had never been observed using the languages: Sanskrit, Malay, “Tonquinese,” Cochin-Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, Icelandic, Lappish, “Ruthenian,” Frisian, Lettish, Cornish, Quechua, and Bimbarra. In seven other languages, he could begin a conversation and knew conversational phrases: Sinhalese, Burmese, Japanese, Irish, Gaelic, Chippewa, Delaware, and “some of thelanguages of Oceanica.” Such linguistic adventuring may be impressive, though one has to note that this calculation means that Mezzofanti possessed only bits of language in a third of the seventy-two languages with which Russell credits him.
According to Russell’s best evidence, Mezzofanti had only the rudimentsin two more sets of languages. He could converse in eleven more, though there weretoo few eyewitness reports of his Kurdish, Georgian, Serbian, Bulgarian, “Gipsy language,” Peguan, Welsh, Angolese, “Mexican,” “Chilian,” and “Peruvian” to really pin down his abilities. (Which puts the modern observer in the peculiar position of having to suppose that Mezzofanti might have had greater abilities in some languages than anyone knew.) However, in nine languages (Syriac, Ethiopian,“Amarinna,” Hindustani, Gujarati, Basque, Wallachian, “Californian,” and Algonquin) he “spoke less perfectly . . . in all of which, however, his pronunciation, at least, is described as quite perfect,” Russell wrote.
Yet there were thirty languages that Russell and Watts agreed, more or less, that Mezzofanti had mastered . “These he spoke with freedom,” Russell wrote, “and with a purity of accent,of vocabulary, and of idiom, rarely attained by foreigners.” He defined Mezzofanti’s “fluency” as an ability to talk without interruption (regardless of content) and with grammatical accuracy. “Above all,” Russell wrote, a man could be truly said to know a language thoroughly “if he be admitted by intelligent and educated natives to speak it correctly and idiomatically.”
For his part, Watts defined“mastery” as being “able to speak [a language] with perfect fluency and correctness,” which would match “in the
His book is an absolutetreasure, studded with the names of royals and intellectuals, with fascinating whispered asides on every page. At the beginning, Russell devotes 120 pages to describing a menagerie of polyglot scholars, monarchs, missionaries, explorers, and warriors whoknew many languages. Most came from European countries. Mithridates makes an appearance. So does Sir William Jones (1746–1794), a British judgein India and a philologist who said that he knew twenty-eight languages. Part of a chapter discusses infant prodigies and unschooled polyglots, such as the British traveler Tom Coryat (1577–1617), who walked all over Europe and eastern Mediterranean countries, accumulating Italian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, and probably a dozen other languages he had no use for at home.
Against thisbackdrop, Russell sets Mezzofanti’s monumentalism: “Cardinal Mezzofanti will be found to stand so immeasurably above even the highest of these names . . . that, at least for the purposes of comparison with him, its minor celebrities can possess little claim for consideration,” he wrote.
An enemy of Mezzofanti’s skeptics, Russell contributed to a concrete case for his skill by creating a listof languages that Mezzofanti knew. More important, he lent a sense of order to the reports of firsthand observations. He borrowed a basic framework from William Jones, who had sorted his own twenty-eight languages according to his abilities in each. * The result produced something like the following.
Russell placed fourteen of Mezzofanti’s languages at the lowest level, which meant that he’d studiedthe grammar and vocabulary but had never been observed using the languages: Sanskrit, Malay, “Tonquinese,” Cochin-Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese, Icelandic, Lappish, “Ruthenian,” Frisian, Lettish, Cornish, Quechua, and Bimbarra. In seven other languages, he could begin a conversation and knew conversational phrases: Sinhalese, Burmese, Japanese, Irish, Gaelic, Chippewa, Delaware, and “some of thelanguages of Oceanica.” Such linguistic adventuring may be impressive, though one has to note that this calculation means that Mezzofanti possessed only bits of language in a third of the seventy-two languages with which Russell credits him.
According to Russell’s best evidence, Mezzofanti had only the rudimentsin two more sets of languages. He could converse in eleven more, though there weretoo few eyewitness reports of his Kurdish, Georgian, Serbian, Bulgarian, “Gipsy language,” Peguan, Welsh, Angolese, “Mexican,” “Chilian,” and “Peruvian” to really pin down his abilities. (Which puts the modern observer in the peculiar position of having to suppose that Mezzofanti might have had greater abilities in some languages than anyone knew.) However, in nine languages (Syriac, Ethiopian,“Amarinna,” Hindustani, Gujarati, Basque, Wallachian, “Californian,” and Algonquin) he “spoke less perfectly . . . in all of which, however, his pronunciation, at least, is described as quite perfect,” Russell wrote.
Yet there were thirty languages that Russell and Watts agreed, more or less, that Mezzofanti had mastered . “These he spoke with freedom,” Russell wrote, “and with a purity of accent,of vocabulary, and of idiom, rarely attained by foreigners.” He defined Mezzofanti’s “fluency” as an ability to talk without interruption (regardless of content) and with grammatical accuracy. “Above all,” Russell wrote, a man could be truly said to know a language thoroughly “if he be admitted by intelligent and educated natives to speak it correctly and idiomatically.”
For his part, Watts defined“mastery” as being “able to speak [a language] with perfect fluency and correctness,” which would match “in the
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