Who are the known polyglots of wuxia?
Who are the known polyglots of wuxia?
Do the obvious ones such as Xiao Yuanshan speaking Khitan, Tibetan Monk speaking Tibetan (although he might not have spoken Han, he could understand it) count?
Lu Xiaofeng could speak Mandarin as well as Cantonese, but that's probably a dialect thing (like Huang Rong speaking in Lin An accent).
There's your favourite - Guo Jing! Having grown up on the Mongolian plains, he was completely fluent in the Mongolian language, and used it all the time while in Mongolia, speaking Chinese only with his mother and teachers. By contrast, the Mongolians generally didn't know any Chinese, so there was little interaction between them and the Han characters in the LOCH novel (unlike in TVB's LOCH '82...).
The fourth Wudang hero knew Mongolian I believe.
IIRC, Huang Rong knows sign language if that counts.
Zhu Ziliu knew Hindi (or whatever language the Indian monk spoke).
忽见柳荫下两个小孩子在哀哀痛哭,瞧模样正是武敦儒、武修文兄弟。郭芙大声叫道:「喂,你们在干甚麽?」武 修文回头见是郭芙,哭道:「我们在哭,你不见麽?」
Whoever read the Sanskrit parts of 9yin and 9yang manuals should know Sanskrit, right?
Qian Tongsi (BXJ) speaks Portuguese.
忽见柳荫下两个小孩子在哀哀痛哭,瞧模样正是武敦儒、武修文兄弟。郭芙大声叫道:「喂,你们在干甚麽?」武 修文回头见是郭芙,哭道:「我们在哭,你不见麽?」
I sort of wonder if Luk Siu Fung was a native of Guangdong province? Not only does he speak Cantonese, but Guangdong was the first location that came to his mind when he talked with the Four Imperial Guards about getting witnesses to testify that he was elsewhere (not the Forbidden City) that day.
Yeung Hong and Wanyan Hong Lik speak both mandarin and Jin's language.
Kangxi, Qianlong and qing officials speak both mandarin and manchu language.
Princess Fragrance and her sister speak both mandarin and xinjiang language.
THe persians from HSDS speak both their native language and mandarin.
Pretty much anybody who traveled in Jiang Hu had to know just about every dialect known to the Central Plains. Only the Mandarins spoke Mandarin.