The disappearance of the polyglot

Cafe Society
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I’ve been reading a copy of Alfred Bester’s Starburst that I picked up at Arisia. I’ve read most of the stories – possibly all of them – before, but it’s been a while. Right now I’m on the 1954 short story The Starcoamer, which I first read under the title 5,271,009. It’s a tour de force that pokes fun at a lot of science fiction cliche plots, pointing out that they’re juvenile wish-fulfilment plots. The character who does most of the exposing of this is Mr. Solon Aquila, who knows damned near everything and is outrageously lucky. And – my reason for bringing him up – he speaks like this:

“HimmelHerrGottSeiDank! I’m crazy, man, crazy. Eclectic, by God…The Weltmann type, nicht wahr? My ideal: Goethe. Tout le monde. God. damn.”

He spoke a spectacular tongue of mixed metaphors and meanings. Dozens of languages and dialects came out in machine-gun bursts. Apparently he also lied ad libitum.

It seems to me that this kind of character used to be more common, and apparently disappeared in recent years. Examples are Mr. Paravicini in Agatha Christie’s outrageously long-running play(it’s still being performed, having only a hiatus due to Covid) The Mousetrap. In her printed edition of the play, Christie points out that audiences might mistake the character for her famous sleuth Hercule Poirot at first (although Poirot isn’t as absurd and uses fewer languages), and the emcee at the Parisian nightclub in Charade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeXSTFmHeA4

He has the excuse that he has to cater to a polyglot crowd, so he does his performance in English, French, and other languages so he’ll be understood, not from any personality quirk. He still comes off the same.

The most recent example I know of is Salvatore from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The character was played by Ron Perlman in the 1986 film.

(Adso: Which language is he speaking?

William of Baskerville: All of them…and none of them.")

I’ve seen the spiritual brothers of these in other places, but can’t recall them at present. More to the point, I don’t seem to see them anymore.

Polls only: No discussion
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I can’t recall if the more recent versions of Gomez Addams are still as promiscuous with the languages of love (Spanish, Italian, French, and…Yiddish) as John Astin’s.

In real life, I’ve encountered more than one pickleball player who circumvents the etiquette that proscribes cursing by dipping into to those of various other languages.

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Well, the purpose of Solon Aquila’s speech is to immediately identify him. Halsyon runs into him in various guises and it’s important that the reader immediately knows who’s talking. It’s the same reason why Marcellus Washburn has a Band-Aid on the back of his neck in Pulp Fiction: so the reader/audience knows that character.

The MC in Cabaret sings the song “Wilkommen” in three languages.

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Malka Older’s characters in the series The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti speak multilingually, but it look to me more like it’s intended to be a polyglot creole.

The protagonist of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao speaks English, Spanish, and Spanglish.

The protagonist of my novel-in-progress speaks English, Hebrew, Spanish, Arabic, Galego, a little Basque, and classical Greek and Latin. The other main character also speaks French, German, Occitan, and probably other languages.

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That’s why he’s that type in the story. But the type exists in other works, for other reasons. Only it appears to be far less frequent of late.

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I actually witnessed something like the OP mentions, on a cruise ship last year. The ship was an Italian line sailing out of Hamburg, so it was a fairly polyglot collection of crew and passengers to begin with, but one night they had a magician-cum-pickpocket (he would basically bring people onstage, insult them, and steal their wallets) performing on the main stage, and his patter - which didn’t stop for more than three seconds for the entire show - shifted smoothly from English to Italian to German, with maybe some Dutch and Spanish in there as well, often in the same sentence. It was hard to track, but the end result was pretty funny.

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I’d like to direct the OPs attention to The Hacker trope. Being a computer Hacker seems to only make you good at breaking into servers, but writers use that as short code for, ‘the all knowing character in the plot’.

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I think polyglots were more common when the world was a bit smaller and moved a bit slower…especially the fictional polyglots.

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I think some people have a facility for languages, making it easier for them to pick up new ones.

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Col. Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds spoke English, French, German, and Italian.

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John Wick spoke every language known to man.

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Maybe the polyglot is dying out in the USA. Or in the books you read. But not in my world, even if people, me included, use DeepL(dot)com and ChatGPT more and more. I dispute the premise.

Most people today speak some sort of English or Globish. You may not notice they are polyglots because they speak English to you. But that is not their mother tongue. Or maybe you don’t often have the chance to speak to foreigners. But in my experience most people I know speak at least two languages. Most people are polyglots to me.

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A polyglot definitely speaks more than two languages.

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One of my college roommates – quite possibly the smartest person I personally know – is a polyglot. He’s fluent in English, Norwegian, Arabic, Spanish, and Russian; he majored in linguistics, and extensive study of multiple languages, from different families, was part of his degree program.

OTOH, he’s also 60 years old, so it’s not like he’s a “new” polyglot.

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There’s a Swiss comedian who uses German, Swiss German, French, Italian, and Spanish in his act. Many Swiss people speak at least a smattering of the three main languages, or even more, so they are able to follow and appreciate much of his humor. Quite difficult if you’re new to German and have no idea about French or Italian.

I seem to know a lot of people who speak German, French, and English. And a few who speak Italian as well.

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Another premise I dispute:

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I’ll suggest the literary device of “polyglot” is less prevalent in English these days. It may well be alive and well in writings of by, and for Europeans or Asians.

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It is now more common for people to be polyglots (i.e., to speak and understand more than one language). About 63% of all people now are. This may have caused the term to be less commonly used in conversation. If the percentage of people who are taller than a given height or heavier than a given weight or have a certain hair color or who live longer than a given number of years or any other characteristic of people goes from being a minority to a majority, there’s less point in calling anyone by that term, since it now applies to most people. There’s no point in calling someone a hearty if he has a heart.

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That’s more or less what happened to the term “yuppie.”

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In my travels and at work, I have been that person in real life.