The script (lots of updates)

I want to put together a multilingual video for Babel No More, and I need your help. I’m envisioning a video where people from all over the world each contribute a line from a story in a different language, and that these are edited together.

Below is a set of instructions, and the script.

1. Choose your language.

2. Pick a line of the script, translate it from English into your language, and video record yourself saying it. You can use your phone, laptop, or camera.

3. Email the video to info [at] babel no more dot com, telling me the line you’re reading and the language you’re speaking. Also, let me know if I can mention your name and location in the video.

4. I’ll email you back a release form and a code for a 5-lesson download in any language from Pimsleur.

Here’s the story. I need you to read one line per language. Do more if you’d like, but please don’t read the whole story — it will make editing too time-consuming.

2. In 1840, a Russian scholar named A.V. Starchevsky met Mezzofanti in Rome and puzzled the language genius by speaking to him in Ukrainian.

3. “What language is that?” asked the surprised Mezzofanti.

4. “Little Russian,” Starchevsky replied, which is what Russians called it then.

DONE

5. “Well, come to see me in two weeks,” Mezzofanti said.

6. When the two men met, Mezzofanti was able to speak to him very fluently in Ukrainian, and they chatted for hours.

7. Starchevsky was amazed — how had Mezzofanti done this?

8. One simple answer is that Russian and Ukrainian are related languages, and Mezzofanti knew Russian already.

9. But to learn it so well in just two weeks was astounding.

DONE: 10. Starchevsky became obsessed with the notion that Mezzofanti possessed some secret.

11. For 40 years he read everything he could find about the cardinal.

12. He was about to give up when he discovered Mezzofanti’s method.

13. He passed it along to his students, because it proved to be very powerful.

14. With it they could master a new language in three to four weeks.

15. Otherwise he never revealed what he’d found.

16. He would only say that any average person who used it should be able to learn a foreign language in a month.

17. He planned to found a college to teach dozens of languages, but his plans were cut short by the Russian revolution.

18. Mezzofanti’s secret was lost in the tumult.