Carpet Cleaner Speaks 24 Languages

[odanny]

Anyone remember the movie "Good Will Hunting"? This is the real life version, only instead of mathematics, it is language. ​

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Vaughn’s languages​

Hyperpolyglots like Vaughn have varying levels of expertise in the languages they speak. Here’s how Vaughn defines his abilities.

Fluent​

Can readily carry on a conversation on any topic, read and write without difficulty
English
Spanish
Portuguese
Russian
Czech
Slovak
Bulgarian
Romanian

Conversational​

Able to have deep conversations on a wide range of subjects, sometimes have to pause to think of words, can read and write
Croatian
Finnish
Italian
Latvian
Nahuatl
Serbian

Intermediate​

Can carry simple conversations about many topics, may require more pausing, can read and do some writing
American Sign Language
Catalan
Dutch
French
German
Hungarian
Icelandic
Irish Gaelic
Norwegian
Polish

Basic​

Can speak and understand a wide variety of phrases on basic topics such as daily life and travel, can write and read in some, but not all.
Amharic
Arabic
Estonian
Georgian
Greek
Hebrew
Indonesian
Japanese
Lakota
Lithuanian
Mandarin
Navajo
Salish
Sinhalese
Swedish
Ukrainian
Welsh

Some familiarity​

Knows around 100 words and many introductory phrases
Mongolian
Vietnamese
Tzotzil
Zapotec

Carpet Cleaner Can Speak Over 24 Languages, Making Him a Real, Live ‘Polyglot’

46-year-old Vaughn Smith can speak over 24 languages with eight he can fluently articulate. Know more about the other abilities beyond ordinary he has.

www.sciencetimes.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2022/multilingual-hyperpolyglot-brain-languages/

 

[Hang on Sloopy]

I am totally fluent in Arabic, Chinese, and Russian

 

[Canon Shooter]

That's pretty crazy.

I can speak some German, Spanish, Italian and French, but I'm nowhere near fluent in any of them...

 

[odanny]

That's pretty crazy.

I can speak some German, Spanish, Italian and French, but I'm nowhere near fluent in any of them...

That's pretty damn good, though. You could likely become fluent in one, or all of them, if you practiced and/or took lessons. I am, sadly, monolingual.

The guy is clearly a savant, has a brain that specializes in language like Musk specializes in STEM.

 

[Rambunctious]

My aunt had a huge home in the San Fernado valley...she fostered children with mental deficiencies...one kid who was about 16 years old could sit behind a piano and play anything you asked him to play with total perfection....he could hear a song just once and with no music charts he would play the song and not miss one note....everything from Beethoven to the Beatles but he couldn't even take a bus to town without help and someone to go with him...

I was about 8 and would take him to the library on some Saturdays and he would hold onto my shoulder and not let go...he was terrified at being lost....even though he went to the library every Saturday....

 

[Canon Shooter]

That's pretty damn good, though. You could likely become fluent in one, or all of them, if you practiced and/or took lessons. I am, sadly, monolingual.

The guy is clearly a savant, has a brain that specializes in language like Musk specializes in STEM.

I used to work a lot in Quebec, and started learning French to better serve my clients. What I found was that they preferred to speak English when dealing with me because it was the only time they really got to use it...

 

[TNHarley]

What do you call someone that can speak 3 languages? Trilingual
What do you call someone that can speak 2 languages? Bilingual
What do you call someone that can speak 1 language? American

 

[two_iron]

I speak enough Russian and Spanish to get top-tier pussy in Moscow or Mexico. Don't hate.... congratulate.

 

[odanny]

speak enough Russian and Spanish to get top-tier pussy in Moscow or Mexico. Don't hate.... congratulate.

The only way you'll ever get top-tier pussy is if you pay for it.

 

[Colin norris]

Anyone remember the movie "Good Will Hunting"? This is the real life version, only instead of mathematics, it is language. ​

​

​

​

Vaughn’s languages​

Hyperpolyglots like Vaughn have varying levels of expertise in the languages they speak. Here’s how Vaughn defines his abilities.

Fluent​

Can readily carry on a conversation on any topic, read and write without difficulty
English
Spanish
Portuguese
Russian
Czech
Slovak
Bulgarian
Romanian

Conversational​

Able to have deep conversations on a wide range of subjects, sometimes have to pause to think of words, can read and write
Croatian
Finnish
Italian
Latvian
Nahuatl
Serbian

Intermediate​

Can carry simple conversations about many topics, may require more pausing, can read and do some writing
American Sign Language
Catalan
Dutch
French
German
Hungarian
Icelandic
Irish Gaelic
Norwegian
Polish

Basic​

Can speak and understand a wide variety of phrases on basic topics such as daily life and travel, can write and read in some, but not all.
Amharic
Arabic
Estonian
Georgian
Greek
Hebrew
Indonesian
Japanese
Lakota
Lithuanian
Mandarin
Navajo
Salish
Sinhalese
Swedish
Ukrainian
Welsh

Some familiarity​

Knows around 100 words and many introductory phrases
Mongolian
Vietnamese
Tzotzil
Zapotec

Carpet Cleaner Can Speak Over 24 Languages, Making Him a Real, Live ‘Polyglot’

46-year-old Vaughn Smith can speak over 24 languages with eight he can fluently articulate. Know more about the other abilities beyond ordinary he has.

www.sciencetimes.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2022/multilingual-hyperpolyglot-brain-languages/

I'm calling the whole story bullshit.

 

[odanny]

I'm calling the whole story bullshit.

Well, you're wrong. His brain, as well as his language ability, has been studied by the chair of linguistics at M.I.T.

I'll hazard a guess they know more about language than you do.

 

[Colin norris]

Well, you're wrong. His brain, as well as his language ability, has been studied by the chair of linguistics at M.I.T.

I'll hazard a guess they know more about language than you do.

Yet tell me he's that smart but he's cleaning carpets???
Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds?
Are you really that gullible?
Grow up you fool

 

[odanny]

Yet tell me he's that smart but he's cleaning carpets???
Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds?
Are you really that gullible?
Grow up you fool

I read the full story on the Washington Post, which is paywalled.

Yes, I believe it is 100% true.

It would appear to me that facts mean little to people like yourself, and you base your opinion on assumptions.

 

[TheParser]

I'm calling the whole story bullshit.

I am calling the whole story, uh, exaggerated.

He does not and cannot speak all those languages.

I am not saying this because I am almost too stupid to speak even English correctly.

I AM saying this because no one (no one!) could do what he claims.

When I hear, for example, that the Pope speaks X number of languages, I smile to myself. What they mean is that His Holiness has learned to say, for example, "God bless you" perhaps in a dozen languages. And that goes for flight attendants who can ask "Coffee, tea, or milk?" in two dozen languages.

 

[odanny]

Edited for brevity, bolded (mine) for emphasis.



"So, how many languages do you speak?"

"Oh goodness," Vaughn says. "Eight, fluently."

"Eight?" Kelly marvels.

"Eight," Vaughn confirms. English, Spanish, Bulgarian, Czech, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Slovak.

"But if you go by like, different grades of how much conversation," he explains, "I know about 25 more."

Vaughn glances at me. He is still underselling his abilities. By his count, it is actually 37 more languages, with at least 24 he speaks well enough to carry on lengthy conversations. He can read and write in eight alphabets and scripts. He can tell stories in Italian and Finnish and American Sign Language. He's teaching himself Indigenous languages, from Mexico's Nahuatl to Montana's Salish. The quality of his accents in Dutch and Catalan dazzle people from the Netherlands and Spain.

How did he get this way? And what was going on in his brain? But also: why was he cleaning carpets for a living?

His teachers and his parents, meanwhile, so often looked at him with disappointment. He'd chosen the wrong sentence when it was his turn to read aloud in class, again. His teacher called his mother to say he wasn't paying attention, again. His dad was sending him back to his mom's house, again. Always, it felt to Vaughn like there was something wrong with him.

"I feel like I didn't know how to guide him to do better," his mom, Sandra Vargas, says now.

She was in her early 20s, in the midst of a divorce, raising Vaughn and his brother in a country entirely new to her. When she first realized her son wasn't connecting with other kids the way he should, she took him to a psychologist, who told her only that Vaughn was just "muy, muy intellegente."

By 14, Vaughn was living with his dad again, in a basement apartment in Tenleytown, not far from D.C.'s many embassies. He no longer needed to fear looking different than his classmates because the student body at Wilson High School included kids from around the world. Kids who spoke other languages. Immediately, Vaughn had an in.

There was a clique of Brazilian students, so he started to learn Portuguese. He befriended a brother and sister who would write him lists of phrases in Romanian, and watch as Vaughn memorized them all. When he noticed a shy Ethiopian girl, he asked her to teach him Amharic.

But by 17, his mom had moved him back to Maryland. Vaughn tested into the highest-level Russian class at his new school, despite never taking classes before.

And so began an adulthood marked by jobs that came and went. Vaughn has been a painter, a bouncer, a punk rock roadie and a Kombucha delivery man. His friends encouraged him to start a YouTube channel, but after a bout of depression, he stopped filming. On days when there aren't carpets to clean, he helps a friend tint office building windows. He was once a dog walker for the Czech art collector Meda Mládková, the widow of an International Monetary Fund governor. She kept him on as a caretaker of her Georgetown home, which was the closest he ever came to having a career that utilized his languages. Visitors to the house spoke nearly every Eastern European dialect, and before long, so did Vaughn.


Vaughn never sought me out. He agreed to let me spend time with him after one of his friends mentioned him to another Washington Post reporter. Over two months, I verified the scope of Vaughn's abilities by interviewing 10 people who have seen him use his language skills for years and by watching him engage in conversations in 17 of his languages. When I introduced him to Richard Simcott, who organizes an international conference for polyglots, Vaughn switched between 10 languages as they spoke, telling stories in Welsh, Bulgarian, Serbian, Norwegian and more.

I am hoping it's just the effects of another quad espresso, but I think Vaughn is nervous. He's quiet as the doors open, and we're ushered into a building with a sculpture of a brain hanging from the ceiling. He takes a picture of a sign on the wall: "MIT Brain + Cognitive Sciences."

When I called Fedorenko, I told her how amazed I was watching Vaughn befriending Dutch travelers in a Starbucks who couldn't believe he'd never been to the Netherlands and spending his free time poring over books like "Finnish for Swedish Speakers." It made me question my own brain, and why, even though I spend so much time thinking about words for my work, I've always found it incredibly difficult to retain any other language I'd ever tried to learn.

"Vaughn," says one of the PhD candidates leading us to the scanning room now, "I was very excited to see Catalan on your list. I'm from Girona."

Vaughn's nervousness seems to evaporate in an instant.

"Tenia un amic que és de Palma de Mallorca!" Vaughn says, thrilled to tell her about the friend who taught him Catalan 15 years before.

It's possible that Vaughn was born with his language areas being smaller and more efficient. It's possible that his brain started out like mine, but because he learned so many languages while it was still developing, his dedication transformed his anatomy. It could be both. Until researchers can scan language learners as they grow, there's no way to know for sure.

But even without that answer, even before we had the scan results back, Vaughn had what he came to MIT for.

"I got to practice Lithuanian today," he says to a friend on the phone as we navigate Boston's airport. "Catalan, Spanish, Russian and a little bit of Korean!"

And at that very moment, he tells his friend on the phone, "I just feel like, work wise, I gotta do something else. I need to figure out how and what to do. It's not going to get better unless I do something."

I've never heard him talk like that before. At our gate, I ask how he is feeling. He is thinking about the way the Harvard and MIT neuroscientists spent the day asking him questions. Not just for their research, but because they want to understand how, in their own language learning, they could be more like him.

I'm not some worthless person," he says.

Then he pulls out his phone and opens his Duolingo app. He is on a 330-day streak of practicing Welsh, and he isn't going to break it.

The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages

The carpet cleaner heaves his machine up the stairs, untangles its hoses and promises to...

www.sfgate.com

- - -

 

[Colin norris]

I am calling the whole story, uh, exaggerated.

He does not and cannot speak all those languages.

I am not saying this because I am almost too stupid to speak even English correctly.

I AM saying this because no one (no one!) could do what he claims.

When I hear, for example, that the Pope speaks X number of languages, I smile to myself. What they mean is that His Holiness has learned to say, for example, "God bless you" perhaps in a dozen languages. And that goes for flight attendants who can ask "Coffee, tea, or milk?" in two dozen languages.

Spin it how you like. Its bullshit unless proven otherwise.

 

[odanny]

 

[EvilCat Breath]

My aunt had a huge home in the San Fernado valley...she fostered children with mental deficiencies...one kid who was about 16 years old could sit behind a piano and play anything you asked him to play with total perfection....he could hear a song just once and with no music charts he would play the song and not miss one note....everything from Beethoven to the Beatles but he couldn't even take a bus to town without help and someone to go with him...

I was about 8 and would take him to the library on some Saturdays and he would hold onto my shoulder and not let go...he was terrified at being lost....even though he went to the library every Saturday....

Have you ever heard of Kodi Lee? Blind and severely autistic.


He is now a headliner in Las Vegas.

 

[odanny]

A Hispanic (or Asian) Stevie Wonder