Here is what Kwame Appiah writes about Sir Richard Francis Burton:
Born in 1821, he traveled, as a child, with his family in Europe, and spent time getting to know the Romany people; his English contemporaries liked to say that he had acquired some of the Gypsy's wandering ways. He learned modern Greek in Marseilles and French and Italian, including the Neapolitan dialect, as his family moved between the British expatriate communities of France and Italy; and he arrived at Oxford knowing Béarnais--a language intermediate between French and Spanish--and (like every other student in those days) classical Greek and Latin as well.
(Cosmopolitanism, 1-2)
Isn't this fascinating! I especially like the "Béarnais" part...
