Marco Polo a jeho znalost asijských jazyků

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 almost certainly able to speak and write Mongolian. Marco Polo usually referred to Chinese local names in Persian, so it is very likely that he spoke Persian and was able to read the Arabic script. In addition, Persian was the lingua franca used throughout the region at the time even at Kublai Khan’s court. The paper brings some particular examples from Marco’s Mss.