Certainly, many of the hyperglots I meet in Berlin have mastered languages later in life. Keeley grew up in Florida, where he was exposed to native Spanish speakers at school. As a child, he used to tune into foreign radio stations-despite not being able to understand a word. "It was like music to me," he says. But it was only as an adult that he started travelling the world-first to Colombia, where he also studied French, German and Portuguese at college. He then moved on to Switzerland and Eastern Europe before heading to japan. He now speaks at least 20 languages fluently, almost all of which were learnt as an adult. "The critical period hypothesis is a bunch of crap," he says.