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I'm excited to begin blogging for Psychology Today about various things related to my new book about language superlearners, language learning gifts and talents, and the culture of language learning, Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners. It's coming out in January from the Free Press/Simon & Schuster.
In 2004 I wrote a magazine article about what science had to say about hyperpolyglots and their claims, but there was more to the topic than I could cover. What does it mean to speak a language? How can a language be counted? Do hyperpolyglots exist among us, and if so, what are they like? I began writing in 2008.
I should say, by way of beginings, that I'm not a polyglot. I've studied Spanish and Mandarin and had stretches of my life where I spoke those languages easily; I've flirted with Esperanto and Russian, too. But, as I say in the book, I wish my memory were better. Learning new things is a priority for me in middle age -- I'd love to start playing a musical instrument. In general, I'm fascinated with the challenges that polyglots represent to our understandings of the brain and language -- and to our understandings of ourselves.
I've been writing for magazines and newspapers about a variety of language topics for more than a decade: language change, language typology, closed captions, the politics of accents, the evolution of sign languages, phonetic alphabets, the discovery of new languages, speech errors, speech disfluencies, dreaming in languages, and so forth. I've written for Science, The New York Times, Wired, Slate, The New Republic, The Globe & Mail, and many other places. Babel No More is my second book; here's more on my first book.
In this blog, I'm going to be posting interviews with researchers and hyperpolyglots, noting new research on bilingualism, language learning, and neuroplasticity, and commenting on news events. Some substantive posts will appear soon. Until then, I'm showing the cover of the book.
