Story of My Book, So Far

Here's the background of the book, Babel No More. 

In 2005, I wrote an article for a pop science magazine about the science that could explain -- or not -- hyperpolyglots, or people who can speak six or more languages. Because no scientific research has directly dealt with the question of what the upper limits of the human ability to learn, remember, and use languages are, hyperpolyglots are a sort of natural experiment. You have to be careful in this territory, though. Mythology, anecdote, and self-aggrandizing cloud the results. And you have to clearly define what it means to speak a language, as well as what a language is. (Do dialects count? What about artificial languages?)

Convinced that a magazine article wasn't sufficient to deal with these topics, in the spring of 2008, I sold a proposal for Babel No More. Full of literary ambitions, I went looking for living hyperpolyglots to interview. My research took me first into the library, then to Europe. In Bologna, Italy, I was the first person in decades to look at the archives of Cardinal Joseph Mezzofanti, a 19th-century linguistic wonder. On the same trip to Europe, I met Gregg Cox, an American who holds the Guinness Book of World Record's award as the World's Greatest Living Linguist; I also met up with a neurolinguist to check out the remains of an eminent German hyperpolyglot's brain. This would tell us what, if anything, is remarkable about polyglot brains.

All this is in the book, and more, including many of the well-known polyglots and a few less well-known ones. A few you probably haven't heard of. Everyone was fascinating. I believe I'm contributing something solid on the topic. Interviews, historical research, a deep dive into the scientific literature, and a survey for hyperpolyglots provide most of the content. My curiosity and skepticism showed me the way through it.

On the strength of the book project, I was awarded a Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowship in 2008 and spent 4 months living on a secluded ranch west of Austin, Texas, where I drafted the first half of the book and did a lot of thinking about my own background as a language learner. After leaving the ranch, I went back to the field, traveling to Mexico and to southern India to meet people in multilingual communities. At that point, I had about 8 months left to turn in my first draft, which felt very short, given that I had to make sense of more neurological material and of the many revelations and puzzles of the India trip. My time left shortened even more when my wife became pregnant with our first child -- who would come a month before the deadline, when I'd be making the biggest push to finish! Working hard, taking one final research trip to Belgium, and dealing with complications in the pregnancy, I was still able to put together a full draft for my editor.

I've also been working on some multimedia projects, analyzing the survey data, and putting content on this website. I've also continued to meet and interview hyperpolyglots.  

What's your interest in polyglots? Are you a hyperpolyglot? Get in touch via Twitter , or send me an email via the contact page.

Thanks for visiting, and I appreciate your support.