When Vaughn Smith confirmed an appointment with customers in Washington to clean one of their carpets, the Washington Post, he calmly explained to them that he would confess to them in the presence of a journalist something that he had never told them and that he had rarely confided: he is hyper-polyglot.
“How many languages do you speak ?” asks the client. “Eight fluently”, replied the 46-year-old man: English, Spanish, Bulgarian, Czech, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Slovak. “But if you take into account the different levels of conversation”explique M. Smith, I know about twenty-five others.”
In fact, correct the Washington Post, “he continues to underestimate his abilities”. This high school graduate, from a modest background, can have in-depth conversations, in addition to reading and writing, in six other languages, including Finnish, Nahuatl and Serbian. It can hold simple conversations in ten languages, including Catalan, French, Hungarian and Polish. And he has basic knowledge of twenty-one other languages, including Japanese, Mandarin, Swedish, Mongolian and Vietnamese.
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The daily is dumbfounded: “How did it come to this?This attention makes Vaughn Smith uncomfortable. He seems to remember names, numbers, dates, and sounds much better than most people. While this remains a mystery to him, his reason for devoting his life to learning so many languages is not.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has made images of the brains of Vaughn Smith and the unilingual journalist from the Washington Post Jessica Contrera. Their comparison showed that “the regions of Vaughn’s brain used to understand language are much less extensive and less active than the [siennes]”.
This confirms other research carried out with other hyperpolyglots: “He juggles so many languages that he manages to very effectively activate the regions of the brain involved in language,” explains neuroscientist Saima Malik-Moraleda.
Even before hearing that explanation, Vaughn Smith said he was pleased with his visit to MIT: “I have to practice Lithuanian today”he said to a friend on the phone. “Catalan, Spanish, Russian and a bit of Korean!”