THE news arrived as an unexpected email. "Sir," it began. "First, let me apologise for bothering you, but I saw an article you wrote and had to write." The writer, N, went on to describe how his grandfather, a Sicilian who had never gone to school, could learn languages with such remarkable ease that by the end of his life he could speak 70 of them, and read and write in 56. (To preserve the writer's anonymity and that of his family, N is not his real initial.)

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