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Originally posted by EgosXII that's awesome! Obviously its your brother so don't want to be too invasive, but do linguist geniuses suffer from the same 'weirdness' other academic geniuses generally do? i.e: Is your brother fairly normal? Language would conceivably belong to a fairly different part of the brain so it'd be fairly interesting

Not really. he's a little eccentric, but none more so than others.

I think a big thing has to do with the fact he's swiss, so he was rbought up speaking Swiss-German, French and Italian, but as Swiss is not a written language, you also have to speak High German and that's what you also write.

I think nationalities like that have a headstart, at least on the comparative learning aspects of language, which I think plays a huge part in us being able to learn languages. I think once you know two or three languages fluently, others become far easier to learn.

He then learned english in school, and his job is a forest engineer and GIS expert, meaning he's spent extended periods of time all over south america, most of Europe, the East and Haiti.

So combine this experiences with a natural knack or predisposition for languages and I think that's why he's so good at them.

It's weird, he's not really artistic which is what I thought would be a impersonality trait - he is however extremely analytical and his job is to make sense and create usable information from incredibly large sets of data.

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Originally posted by DJ RANN Not really. he's a little eccentric, but none more so than others. I think a big thing has to do with the fact he's swiss, so he was rbought up speaking Swiss-German, French and Italian, but as Swiss is not a written language, you also have to speak High German and that's what you also write. I think nationalities like that have a headstart, at least on the comparative learning aspects of language, which I think plays a huge part in us being able to learn languages. I think once you know two or three languages fluently, others become far easier to learn. He then learned english in school, and his job is a forest engineer and GIS expert, meaning he's spent extended periods of time all over south america, most of Europe, the East and Haiti. So combine this experiences with a natural knack or predisposition for languages and I think that's why he's so good at them. It's weird, he's not really artistic which is what I thought would be a impersonality trait - he is however extremely analytical and his job is to make sense and create usable information from incredibly large sets of data.

Interesting! non-english speakers ironically have an advantage in language because they usually have to learn english... english speakers are generally not forced by the international nature of the world to learn any other language... Lots of linguistic imperialism going on there, but i spose thats another form of the ambiguous 'globalisation' at work

sounds like your brother has an interesting job!

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-Everything I Say is a Lie-

Many children in southwest Macedonia speak 3 or 4 languages. My friend knows English from school, Albanian from being born Albanian, Macedonian because he lives in Macedonia, Turkish because there's a large number of Turks nearby and Turkish soap operas on TV, and German from watching German cartoons cuz hell, what other kinds of cartoons are you going to find in southwest Macedonia?

Albanian and Macedonian are pretty much given, since they are both official languages of the country. Then after a certain age (like 16) they all pretty much know English. Then there's an extra one or two you pick up from nearby people or watching television.

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Originally posted by Jackson Seems strange that there are quite a few young kids with an exceptional grasp on maths/physics...and not other subjects.

Evolution mate, whe are the old generation now...

I'm just gonna say, thats insane. About the numbers in his head ya know. I mean, i don't think i could go to bed with numbers in my head. Thad be just trippy.