A young Nigerian woman, Prosper Oluwafunmibi Babalola, is breaking records locally, for languages by speaking 21 languages fluently.
She speaks German, Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Japanese, Twi, Zulu, Russian, Chinese, Indonesian, Dutch, French, Latin, Italian, English, Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo, among others.
She became a fancy of Twitter fans in her handle: @prosperlingua.
A fourth year student of Veterinary Medicine in University of Ibadan, she is making the best of her talent now doing translations and subtitling films because the academic staff union of universities in Nigeria is on strike.
The Guinness Book of World Records for the polyglot with most languages spoken is held by Ziad Fazah, who speaks 58 languages fluently.
He is Lebanese, born in Liberia and now lives in Brazil.
Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, born in 1774, also learnt and spoke 38 languages.
The Governor of Hong Kong, 1854 – 1859, Sir John Bowring, was said to have spoken 100 languages.
Hans Conon von der Gabelentz, who was born in 1807 in Germany, wrote a book on grammar in 80 languages.
Broca’s area in the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for language production and is found to be bigger in the brain of polyglots.
The first language learnt was also found in a study to facilitate the ability to learn more languages.
In all, polyglots were found to be more creative and have better memory.
Socially, ability to speak many languages is seen as a blessing.
In the Bible, the apostles received this blessing on Pentecost day: “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Now there dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven.
And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language.”(Acts 2: 4 – 6).
The apostles were Galileans who before then, spoke only Aramaic and Hebrew, that day, from the account, spoke every language under heaven praising God and were understood.
photo credit: campusnewsng, premiumtimes
