Linguists Attempt an Impossible Task if
They Try to Master the Hundreds of
Languages Still Spoken.
Language is, of course, a wonderful telegraph system between minds; but
what a multiplicity of codes! The living languages to-day number eight
hundred and sixty, to say nothing of five thousand dialects. This is a
Babel indeed.
Europe has eighty-nine languages; Asia, one hundred and twenty-three;
Africa, one hundred and fourteen; America, one hundred and seventeen; and
the islands of the Pacific and Indian oceans have four hundred and
seventeen.
Probably the most remarkable linguist the world has ever
known was Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, who was born at
Bologna in 1774, created cardinal in 1838, and died at Rome
in 1849. The list of languages and dialects which he
acquired reached the astounding total of one hundred and
fourteen.
It would be interesting to know what system was pursued by
Cardinal Mezzofanti in the study of languages, but little
light is now obtainable on this subject.
The most famous linguists of antiquity were Mithridates,
King of Pontus, who is said to have been thoroughly
conversant with the languages of the twenty-five nations
over which his rule extended; and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt,
of whom Plutarch says that "she spoke most languages," and
that "there were but few of the foreign ambassadors to whom
she gave audience through an interpreter."