2 biographies on Sauerwein, the polyglot

[Kraut]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Sauerwein

Georg Julius Justus Sauerwein (15 January 1831 in Hanover – 16 December 1904 in Christiania (now Oslo) was a German publisher, polyglot, poet, and linguist. He is buried at Gronau

Sauerwein was the greatest linguistic prodigy of his time and mastered about 75 languages.
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Georg Sauerwein - europear og døl : ein dokumentasjon.

https://www.nb.no/nbsok/nb/a32dbb7b5892 ... ang=no#151
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Hans Masalskis: Das Sprachgenie. Georg Sauerwein – eine Biographie. Oldenburg 2003

https://books.google.de/books?id=wSvTd3 ... &q&f=false





http://www.girenas.de/spracheinf.php?id=2&seite=4

Sauerwein und die Sprache

Sauerwein and language

To call Georg Julius Justus Sauerwein a linguistic genius is not an understatement. Oskar Vistdal, a Sauerwein researcher, counts more than 75 languages in his biography "Georg Sauerwein - europear og døl". The number was determined by the evaluation of his writings, his diaries and the language in which he did translations.

The learning of the languages caused no problems for Sauerwein; in some cases he learned the languages in a few weeks, as described by the Sauerwein expert Hans Masalski in his biography "Das Sprachgenie". Sauerwein preferred learning from a native speaker, grammars and dictionaries were only tools for him to organize what he had learned.

After his death, his brain was even the subject of research: it was taken out to investigate possible peculiarities of the brain in a polyglot person.

[LinguaPony]

Polyglots usually complain that once the number of the languages exceeds a certain threshold, it becomes very hard to maintain them. Wonder how Sauerwein kept his 75 from getting rusty.

[Willow]

Polyglots usually complain that once the number of the languages exceeds a certain threshold, it becomes very hard to maintain them.

Where can I find this information?
I've noticed that even with a little number of languages it is hard to sound flawless: they always influence one another, and sometimes you just can't restrain yourself from making really stupid mistakes or sound weird

[LinguaPony]

Oh, there are all sorts of videos on youtube - personal channels, Polyglot Conference presentations, etc... I can't name one particular video, but the problem of maintenance is mentioned so often, you couldn't miss it. Almost any multilingual interview will do.

[reineke]

Polyglots usually complain that once the number of the languages exceeds a certain threshold, it becomes very hard to maintain them.

Where can I find this information?
I've noticed that even with a little number of languages it is hard to sound flawless: they always influence one another, and sometimes you just can't restrain yourself from making really stupid mistakes or sound weird

Maximum limit and The Rule of Seven

"There was once a farmer, who sowed some grain and was hoping for a quick crop. So, as soon as he saw the shoots appear out of the ground, he started pulling on them, so as to make them grow faster. The roots clung to the ground for a while and ... tore off. The shoots dried out, and the impatient farmer went hungry. The moral of the story is: all living things grow gradually, and one can only speed up their development to a point."

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... p?TID=5478

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... =1489&PN=1

[Kraut]

Polyglots usually complain that once the number of the languages exceeds a certain threshold, it becomes very hard to maintain them.

Where can I find this information?
I've noticed that even with a little number of languages it is hard to sound flawless: they always influence one another, and sometimes you just can't restrain yourself from making really stupid mistakes or sound weird

Sauerwein himself talks about having had to relearn Lithuanian (in Stallupönen, East.Prussia) which he had probably first learnt as a youth from Prussian-Lithuanian migrant workers in his hometown in Westphalia.

[tungemål]

I never heard about this man. Seems like an interesting guy. He also lived a number of years in a small village in a valley in Norway. Did you read the biography, and how did you find it?

[Kraut]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Krebs

Emil Krebs (15 November 1867 in Freiburg in Schlesien – 31 March 1930 in Berlin) was a German polyglot and sinologist. He mastered 68 languages in speech and writing and studied 120 other languages.[1]


https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Krebs

His brain, taken in 1930 by the brain researcher Oskar Vogt, is kept as a so-called "elite brain" in the Institute for Brain Research and General Biology (today: Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf). Neurologist Katrin Amunts re-examined his brain there in 2004 [25] She summarises her findings elsewhere in a generally understandable way as follows: "The Broca Centre is located in the temporal region. It plays an important role in speech production. Emil Krebs's construction of the Broca area is very different from people like us. In all people, the nerve cells are arranged in layers, but in him, the cell strips can be more clearly distinguished from each other under the microscope. Krebs did not generally have a different brain than the normal population, but only a very special Broca's area. It is therefore highly probable that his special talent for language can be traced back to the unusual development of this brain structure"[26]The German Foreign Office is dedicating an exhibition to Emil Krebs in the period from 17 January to 19 February 2020[27].

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[tungemål]

There is a animation movie about Georg Sauerwein. I bought it and am looking forward to watch it. This one has German audio and has got subtitles in Italian, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, and Romanian.

[Kraut]

Thanks for this. I must admit that this has escaped my attention. I have been writing the Wikipedia entry "Preußisch-Litauen" for more than 15 years and collected and researched all material that has become available over the years via digitalisation. Masalski's biography on Sauerwein has been a major source, on Google books most of the text is available:

https://books.google.de/books?id=wSvTd3 ... as&f=false

more on the animation
https://absolutmedien.de/film/4074/DER+ ... HEN+KONNTE