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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

Available now

27 minutes

Last on

Sat 24 Oct 2020 07:32GMT

Broadcasts

  • Tue 2 Jul 2019 12:32GMT
  • Tue 2 Jul 2019 17:06GMT
  • Tue 2 Jul 2019 21:06GMT
  • Wed 3 Jul 2019 01:32GMT
  • Sat 6 Jul 2019 08:32GMT
  • Sun 7 Jul 2019 17:06GMT
  • Wed 21 Oct 2020 10:32GMT
  • Wed 21 Oct 2020 15:32GMT
  • Wed 21 Oct 2020 21:32GMT
  • Wed 21 Oct 2020 22:32GMT
  • Sat 24 Oct 2020 01:32GMT
  • Sat 24 Oct 2020 07:32GMT

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