四、完形填空
Mezzofanti was an Italian. He lived between 1774 and 1849. He was the best language learner ever. He 1
A
hours every day practising pronunciation and grammar. He never left Italy, but could speak more than 30 foreign languages well. People from all over the world came to 2
D
him in their mother tongue (母語). How could Mezzofanti do that? All of them were 3
A
.
At the age of 12， Mezzofanti spoke German， Greek， Latin， and at least five other languages as well as his native Italian. His teachers couldn't 4
B
that he could master (掌握) every new language so fast. Then he learned Arabic， Russian， Hindi， Old English， Maltese and Chinese. Chinese was the 5
C
language for him to study： it took him four months.
Mezzofanti's special 6
D
made him famous and his stories spread widely. According to (根據(jù)) one of them， he also spoke 30 other languages very well and understood another 20 languages. Visitors would 7
C
him by suddenly changing between different languages.
According to another story， he heard there were two foreigners in a prison (監(jiān)獄) in Rome. A guard (警衛(wèi)) told him they spoke a dialect no one else understood. He studied their language in one night and had 8
C
with them the next morning! It's hard to know 9
B
all these stories are true. Some people， for example， ask， "How did he learn Old English without meeting anyone who spoke it?" or "Did he really learn a language just in a few 10
B
or in one night?" We don't know for sure， but we are sure that he was a language-learning legend (傳奇人物).
