How to pronounce “mezzo” in English

But I hope that after my talk and after you read the book that you will think of this guy when you think of massive multilingualism.This is Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti, an Italian priest and cardinal who was born in 1774.He died in 1849.

So we have two of our soloists from my Carnegie concert yesterday with us.We have Camille Brault, mezzo-soprano.Coming on up. And Lewis Whaitiri.

And that's what the passaggio is.So I would say she's either a lyric mezzo or a dramatic coloratura.

You know who he is?Anyone? Cardinal Mezzofanti this Italian cardinal of the 18th 19th century, who was so to speak 72 languages, which is a number thathas a religious significance because it's said to number of languages was created when the Tower of Babel fell.

Have you heard this story.But I heard the version of the anecdote about Cardinal Mezzofanti, this priest.

Have you heard this story.Oh what, Mezzofanti? Well, the story that you told?

Yay. When most people try to learn to cook, what are they in fact doing?All right. So Cardinal Mezzofanti is a hyperpolyglot.

Learning to read and write.Interestingly, Mezzofanti had a similar experience with written Chinese.He always claimed that he could speak Chinese, but Mezzofanti had a nervous breakdown when he was faced with trying to learn how to read and write Chinese.

And that's what the passaggio is.And that always goes with either the dramatic coloratura or a lyric mezzo.

Have you heard this story.Yeah. They have these repertoire that are-- Mezzofanti had something like 11 language families in seven scripts,

So they dug him up to make sure that his body was intact.I think also because there might have been a move to try to canonize Mezzofanti, and the first step in the canonization process in the Roman Catholic Church is to make surethat the person's body has not been taken for veneration by any other group.

glommed onto each other, and that the hyperpolyglot is just a more extreme version of that.I've had conversations with people saying, "Did Mezzofanti speak 72 languages like a native speaker?" The implication being that if he didn't like a native speaker, then it's not a phenomenonthat's all that interesting.

And took some inspiration from some photographs, NASA photographs that were coming back of the Earth from space for this one.Here's another etching, its a mezzotint actually and this was an astronomical occurrence ofa blue moon, the second full moon within on calendar month.

And that's what the passaggio is.Because my good friend Dolora Zajick, who has been one of the world's famous dramatic mezzos for years and years, trained at the San Francisco

Yay. When most people try to learn to cook, what are they in fact doing?There's a fascinating guy-- I talk about him briefly in "The 4-Hour Chef"-- named Cardinal Mezzofanti.

But you take apart the packets, and on each slip-- there's collections of slips of paper, and on one side is written a word in one language, and on the other side is written another word.I went, "My God, it's Mezzofanti's flashcards!" So the common notion of the polyglot or thehyperpolyglot or the talented person is that they get this stuff by osmosis, but in his case, anyway, it turns out to involve quite a lot of hard work and repetitive work.

Interestingly, Mezzofanti had a similar experience with written Chinese.He always claimed that he could speak Chinese, but Mezzofanti had a nervous breakdown when he was faced with trying to learn how to read and write Chinese.There might have been typhoid or something like that involved as well, 'cause he had fevers and lived in a feverish state for a while.

I did some research for the book in South Asia or South India where people are very multilingual.And I'd say, "I'm writing about this guy Mezzofanti who spoke 72 languages." And people'd go, "Wow, that's amazing.You've got to talk to my uncle.

More different than just positive and negative charge.Even things that seem even obviously real, like nice firm objects, which at the Mezzo scale of physics, have nice reality to them,

that the person's body has not been taken for veneration by any other group.So this is what they found, or an artist's rendering of what they found when they opened up Mezzofanti's tomb.He was all there.

So it's quite an unusual brain for that reason.But in the book, I really endeavored to try to go meet living hyperpolyglots because the Krebs is really interesting, and the Mezzofanti character is really interesting.But what could they really do?

So I set out to write the book to not only write some of the anecdotes, 'cause the stories are really cool, but to try to actually put some numbers on this.There's a funny moment when I'm in Italy and I'm meeting with another guy that's an Italian historian who's written a book about Mezzofanti as a librarian.And I said, "I need to count stuff." And he's like, "You're a positivist" and he punches me in the shoulder.