About the Book
Over the centuries, random individuals have experimented on themselves by learning as many languages as they can. These experiments have been mostly ignored, those individuals mocked as eccentrics with nothing to teach us about the brain, language, or humanity’s linguistic future. Until now.
From writer Michael Erard comes a tale of his search for these language explorers and an attempt to make sense of their linguistic feats and their mental powers.
Venturing from Mexico to south India to California to Belgium, Erard seeks out the hyperpolyglots and tries to make sense of their linguistic feats and mental powers. He calls them a “neural tribe.” Because they don’t want to have the same brains tomorrow that they had yesterday, they are uniquely equipped to face the new linguistic world order.