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polyglottery polyglot

Excellent book review in the New York Times of Babel No More, The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners by Michael Erard. As well as looking at some of the secrets of language acquisition from some of the great polyglots--always interesting for those of us hunting for tips as to how best to learn a second language--the review closes with a fascinating quote from the book that distinguishes multilingualism from hyperpolyglottism: “For multilinguals, learning languages is an act of joining society,” he writes...but “being a hyperpolyglot means exactly the opposite. The hyperpolyglot’s pursuit of many languages may be a bridge to the rest of the world, but it walls him off from his immediate language community.”