Abstract: Marco Polo and his knowledge of Asian languages Marco Polo (1254–1324) claimed (or rather his editors) that he could speak (and read) in other languages in ad dition to his own, at least five. Although he spoke little Chinese or rather not, he spoke a number of languages used in East Asia at the time – most likely Turkic (in the Kuman dialect: (lingua) tartara; tartaresce; tartaresche), which was also spoken among Mongols, Arabized Per sians, Uighurs and perhaps even he knew Mongolian. While communicating with the Great Khan, Marco Polo was...
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Topics:
Linguistics
Ancient history