Вилли Мельников

Willie Melnikov (b. 1962 - d. 2016, 18 october) is a Russian multilingual poet, self-proclaimed polyglot, film actor and photographer. He holds a Master's degree in Medicine and works as a researcher at The Institute of Virology in Moscow. In 1985, Melnikov got wounded in the explosion during Soviet Army campaign in Afghanistan, with his left temporal lobe severely damaged. Doctors predicted possible psycho-pathological consequences, but for Willie they appeared in the unusual form of a phenomenal memory. According to his claim, Melnikov is fluent in over 100 different languages. Some specialists are skeptical about this statement since he never tried to prove his abilities objectively. Also, they argue that "over a hundred" supersedes all known and scientifically proven cases of polyglotism in order of magnitude while some of Melnikov's texts contain errors, meaningless phrases, or appears to be copy-pasted from other authors. Melnikov writes poetry in many languages. He also invented a unique "introxianalingva" style: individual Russian words are replaced with similarly pronounced words from different languages. For instance, заманить собаку ("to entice a dog"), which is pronounced as "zamanit sobaku", turns into a combination of Swahili words zamani and Japanese 砂漠 ("deserted", which is pronounced sabaku).