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The polyglots
Meet the people who speak many languages. How do they do it, and why?
Simon Calder meets people who keep learning new languages not because they have to, but because they want to. What motivates them? Situations like this - an immigrant hotel cleaner who is moved to tears because you speak to her in her native Albanian; A Nepalese Sherpa family that rolls about laughing in disbelief at hearing their foreign guest speak Sherpa. But do polyglots have a different brain from the rest of us? Simon travels to a specialised lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and undergoes a brain-scan himself, to find out.
Presenter: Simon Calder
Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Last on
Sat 24 Oct 2020
07:32GMT
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except Australasia, East Asia, Europe and the Middle East & South Asia
Broadcasts
- Tue 2 Jul 2019 12:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except News Internet
- Tue 2 Jul 2019 17:06GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Australasia
- Tue 2 Jul 2019 21:06GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
- Wed 3 Jul 2019 01:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
- Sat 6 Jul 2019 08:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except East Asia, Europe and the Middle East & South Asia
- Sun 7 Jul 2019 17:06GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service News Internet
- Wed 21 Oct 2020 10:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service
- Wed 21 Oct 2020 15:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa
- Wed 21 Oct 2020 21:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except Europe and the Middle East
- Wed 21 Oct 2020 22:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Europe and the Middle East
- Sat 24 Oct 2020 01:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service News Internet, Europe and the Middle East, West and Central Africa & East Asia only
- Sat 24 Oct 2020 07:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except Australasia, East Asia, Europe and the Middle East & South Asia
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