KNEW 54 LANGUAGES

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 41, 24 May 1935, Page 8

KNEW 54 LANGUAGES

PRIEST'S VAST KNOWLEDGE.

(From the Guardian's Special Corres-

pondent—By Air Mail)

LONDON, April 27.

j An Englishman who knew 54 languages, but had been, out of this | country only once in the 77 years of his lifetime, died in London this week. He was Father William Kent, a Roman Catholic priest, who for nearly 54 years had been attached to the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, Bayswater, London. Father Kent was a Londoner by birth, and spent all his life in London. The only foreign country he ever visited was Belgium, and yet there must be few men to-day who could equal his record of 54 languages. Many of them he spoke fluently. An early passion for comparative philology—the science of the human language in all its branchesled Father Kent to study Biblical and Talmudic origins, and from them he built up his enormous repertory of dead and living languages. Though handicapped for many years by deafness, Father Kent was always willing to help the hundreds of people, from famous scientists and antiquarians to police court officials, who sought his aid in unravelling language problems. Nevertheless, he was not unduly proud of his knowledge. "There are thousands of languages and I know only fifty-four of them," he remarked when he was 73.

Father Kent was fond of maintaining that Cockney English was often better than the more educated type. "In every language in the world except English, the vowel sound 'ai' is pronounced 'i'," he said. "So it should be, and when the Cockney talks about the 'mile trine' (mail train) he is perfectly right."