Harmony of Babel
Harmony of Babel: profiles of famous polyglots of Europe
by Kató Lomb. translated from the Hungarian by Ádám Szegi, edited by Scott Alkir.
Berkeley; Kyoto: TESL-EJ Publications, 2013.
It should be no surprise that this is a Hungarian work. Hungary is not only linguistically isolated from Europe but for a large chunk of the 20th century it was the de facto cultural capital of the Esperanto movement.
Esperanto is mentioned by several interviewees. But see also especially the section "Does Latin have a present? Will Esperanto have a future?".
Contents:
The Sun Is Shining 7
Polyglots: Old and New 11
Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti (1774 –1849) 19What Is the Good Language Learner Like? 69
Sándor Kőrösi Csoma (1784 –1842) 47
Rasmus Christian Rask (1787–1832) 51
Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890) 52
Ármin Vámbéry (1832–1913) 57
Alexander Lenard (1910 –1972) 64
An Imaginary Report on a Round Table of Polyglots 81
Introducing the participants 83Why Is Language Instruction Ailing in Hungary? 197
When can we say we know a language? 139
Which is the most important language skill:
grammar, vocabulary, or good pronunciation? 148
What method did you use to learn languages? 153
Has it ever happened to you that you started
learning a language, but could not cope with it? 162
What connection do you see between age and language learning?
Is your knowledge decreasing with age? 164
Does Latin have a present? Will Esperanto have a future? 169
Are there “easy” and “difficult,” “rich” and “poor,” “beautiful”
and “less beautiful” languages? 179
What is multilingualism good for? 188
Selected References 213
Posts
