Status: Highly suspect
According to
an article in NewKerala.com, the Veena Vadini school in Singrauli, India teaches its students to write with both hands, at the same time. And that's not all:
All these students are able to write simultaneously with both their hands. Trained from the early days at their school, these 72 young students are today at comfort with this rare art. They are also fluent in a number of languages.
Virangat Sharma, the principal of the school said that all his students are proficient in this art, which was started as an experiment. “The children are taught six languages Hindi, Urdu, English, Roman, Sanskrit and Arabic,” says Sharma. “I read somewhere that India's first President Dr. Rajendra Prasad used to write in two languages I also preferred to experiment developing such a skill among my students. All the children here can do this and also know the world's capital cities and their tables up to hundred. They can write on two different subjects and in two different languages at the same time,” says Sharma. Not just that these children can write with both their hands but they can also write in two different languages on two different subjects at the same time, tells Sharma.
Wow. And I thought my ability to write backwards in ancient Greek while doing a one-arm handstand and juggling two balls with my feet was impressive. Needless to say, I'm highly suspicious of the principal's claims. (Assuming that he exists and wasn't misquoted by a reporter.) The same story is also reported by
ananova, adding to its credibility (note: sarcasm). I did a search for "Veena Vadini School" to see if they have a website, but only found links to this article about their instruction in ambidexterity. (Thanks to Kathy for sending me the clipping.)
Update:
SicTim (posting in the comments) remembered that Ripleys had once featured some cases of amazing ambidexterity. Checking the Best of Ripleys volume on my bookshelf, I found these examples. On the left, Lena Deeter of Conway, Arkansas, who
"could write with both hands simultaneously — backwards, forwards, upside-down, even upside-down backwards! She could write in a different direction with each hand simultanously." (She appeared in a Ripleys cartoon on April 1, 1942... I assume she wasn't an April Fool's joke.) On the right is
"a 1936 Dallas Odditorium performer [who] could draw three different cartoons simultaneously — with both hands and a foot!"
These cases indicate that it might be possible for someone to write in two different languages at the same time, but I'm still doubtful that an entire school could be trained to do it.
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Garfield
The one I saw was in cartoon form, though, and was definitely a man. I believe it was Latin with one hand and Greek with the other, but it wasn't Garfield.
I'm going to try and get on the trail.
By the way, one of my goals is to visit all of the Ripley's museums. The one in the Wisconsin Dells has something that will be both fascinating and utterly repellent to film buffs and true crime fans alike -- but I'd never ruin the surprise.
Now I just have to make the Ripley's connection. Part of the problem is that there was a famous"Ripley's cartoon from 1934 about the "presidential death curse."
Hindi and Urdu, by the way, are either very similar or the same language (called Hindi in India and Urdu in Pakistan), depending on whom you believe. Which calls to mind the old linguists' proverb, "A language is a dialect with an army behind it."
In areas where Hindi and Urdu are both common, they get mixed together and are sometimes called "Hindustani". Throughout the entire Indian-Pakistani region, even in what is considered to be proper Hindi or Urdu, little bits of the other language slip in every now and then. Pure Hindi and Urdu is mainly confined to classroom grammar books and formal events.
Written Urdu and Hindi, though, are about as dissimilar as two languages can be. Hindi is written in the Devanagari alphabet from left to right, while Urdu is written in the Arabic alphabet from right to left. You can speak both languages fluently and write Hindi, yet still be unable to read the most simple Urdu sentence.
I don't know about those Indian kids - that sounds pretty fantastic. The difficult part is not the actual writing with both hands, but rather, dividing your conscious attention between two different subjects. I can do exactly what Lena Deeter did, easily. But I think it helps that I am primarily left-handed. What that means is that, when I start with my two hands together and slowly bring them apart as I write, my right hand gets to write the word forward, while my stronger hand has the task of writing the word backwards. Another way of looking at it is that the brain is very good at synchronizing the movements of your two hands to make them act as mirror images. If you can practice at writing your name, for example, well enough with your right hand, you then simply add the left hand, not concentrating so much on writing of the word as on mirroring the movement of the right hand. It feels almost automatic. I can also write upsidedown with my left hand while simultaneously writing upsidedown and backwards with my right hand. When you think about it too much, you will commonly make mistakes such as writing p's or d's backwards. Hope this helps!
Stephanie