The carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 April 2022
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today on “Post Reports,” we meet a carpet cleaner who speaks two dozen languages — and we have an update on what’s happened to him since this story was first published in print.
Read more:
In a city where diplomats and embassies abound, where interpreters can command six-figure salaries at the State Department or the International Monetary Fund, where language proficiency is résumé rocket fuel, Vaughn Smith was a savant with a secret.
He speaks 24 languages well enough to carry on lengthy conversations — and has basic understanding of more than a dozen others — and yet he works as a carpet cleaner.
Today on Post Reports, enterprise reporter Jessica Contrera and audio producer Bishop Sand bring us the remarkable story of a hyperpolyglot with a special brain and a history that has kept him a secret for so long. We also have an update about how his life has started to change since Jessica’s story was first published.
Plus, one more thing: Thanks to your support, we won the 2022 People’s Voice Webby for business podcasts! The winning episode is “A tax haven in America’s heartland.”
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi Bishop. Hi. Hi Jess. Hi Martin. So we are here with Jess Contrara and Bishop |
| 0:07.1 | Sand and what I know is that you all have been working on a story. Yes so for |
| 0:14.5 | the last couple of months Bishop and I have been spending time with this |
| 0:18.2 | incredible guy. So introduce yourself to us in Russian. |
| 0:23.0 | My name is Ben Smith. His name is Ben Smith. He's 46 years old and he's one of the |
| 0:32.7 | few known hyper polyglots in the world. What is a hyper polyglot? Okay so I had |
| 0:43.0 | to learn this too. So when you speak multiple languages that's called a polyglot. |
| 0:48.2 | What's your name? I do not know how to pronounce it. Poly like many glot. I guess it's like |
| 0:54.9 | I don't know. It means tongue. Yes and hyper means over. So it's like over many tongues. |
| 1:03.6 | Like how many languages are we talking about here? It's a really good question right? |
| 1:10.5 | So you ask von or you ask any other hyper polyglot and they'll tell you that |
| 1:15.0 | that's a stupid question which I learn really quickly. So language you know is |
| 1:21.8 | something that is really complicated to learn. Do you know a language if you |
| 1:25.8 | know the vocabulary? Do you know a language if you can say how do I get to the |
| 1:31.2 | train station or like what does it mean to know a language? So von breaks his |
| 1:35.9 | languages down into different categories like most hyper polyglots do. He is |
| 1:40.7 | fluent in eight languages. So that would be of course English, Spanish, Russian, |
| 1:48.3 | Portuguese, Slovak, Czech, Bulgarian, Romanian. I would talk to Romanian as |
| 1:54.8 | fluent in them. He has 24 that he would define as either intermediate or |
| 1:59.7 | conversational which to him means I can carry a conversation in this language. |
| 2:03.6 | People get talked to me. I'll understand what they're saying. I can talk back and |
| 2:07.0 | of course also read and write those languages. So these languages are |
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