Powell Janulus, a Canadian who now lives in British Columbia still holds the Guinness World Records that he earned in 1985 for being fluent in 42 languages.
The record, though, probably belongs to Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong from 1854 to 1859, who was said to know 200 languages, and capable of speaking 100.
Powell Alexander Janulus (born 1939) is a Canadian polyglot who lives in White Rock, British Columbia, and entered the Guinness World Records in 1985 for fluency in 42 languages. To qualify, he had to pass a two-hour conversational fluency test with a native speaker of each of the 42 languages he spoke at that time.
An average person can speak two to four languages in a lifetime. However, human brains work differently, and an average person's brain can handle a maximum of four languages. It takes one year to learn the basics of a language for an average person.
Depending on who you ask, a polyglot could merely be someone who speaks more than two languages. Others would posit that a polyglot must speak at least four or five — in other words, a multilingual with a cherry on top.
In various dictionaries it is defined as someone who can speak or use several different languages. However, it is not defined how many languages one must be able to speak and what level of fluency is necessary to earn this designation. Internationally known polyglots all speak at least 6 languages.
Only three percent of people around the world can speak over four languages. Less than one percent of people worldwide are proficient in many languages. If someone is fluent in more than five languages, the person is called a polyglot.
One of the most well-known polyglots was Cardinal Guiseppe Mezzofanti. With a passion for linguistics, Mezzofanti could speak in at least 40 different languages – although it is said that the total is more around the 70-100 mark.
Indeed, a surprising proportion of them are “hyperglots”, like Keeley and Krasa, who can speak at least 10 languages. One of the most proficient linguists I meet here, Richard Simcott, leads a team of polyglots at a company called eModeration – and he uses about 30 languages himself.
Which are the most widely spoken languages in the world? Some, such as English and Spanish seem obvious, but others may surprise you. Around 7,139 languages are spoken in the world, 90% of which are used in communities of less than 100,000 people, such as tribes or dialects within certain populations.
Alexander Argüelles is a linguist from Chicago, Illinois. Aside from being an expert in the Korean language, he's best known for being able to speak anywhere from 20 to 50 languages.
In the early nineteen fifties, researchers found that people scored lower on intelligence tests if they spoke more than one language. Research in the sixties found the opposite. Bilingual people scored higher than monolinguals, people who speak only one language.
Across multiple sources, Mandarin Chinese is the number one language listed as the most challenging to learn. The Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center puts Mandarin in Category IV, which is the list of the most difficult languages to learn for English speakers.
Is It Even Possible to Learn 10 Languages? Short answer: yes. Many polyglots say they've learned 10 or more languages—it's been said that the 19th-century priest Giuseppe Mezzofanti spoke 50 languages!
1. Chinese — 1.3 Billion Native Speakers. Numbers vary widely — Ethnologue puts the number of native speakers at 1.3 billion native speakers, roughly 900 million of whom speak Mandarin — but there's no doubt it's the most spoken language in the world.
The super-quick answer? Kids (including toddlers) can learn to speak multiple languages at the same time. 2, 3, 4….or more languages at once.
In one study, she and colleagues found that polyglots' networks (which include the frontal and temporal cortical areas of the brain) were smaller than those of people who speak just one or two languages.
In most of the world's languages, 500 words will be more than enough to get you through any tourist situations and everyday introductions.
It might surprise you to learn that there are in fact 83 different languages each spoken by more than ten million people worldwide.
Language & Communications : Example Question #3
Geographers categorize these many languages into 147 different groups, called "Language Families". Of these 147 language families, there are 9 families that are considered the most popular due to the fact that they have over 100 million native speakers.
hyperpolyglot Definitions and Synonyms
noun. or hyper-polyglot. DEFINITIONS1. 1. a person who learns and speaks many different languages.
Polyglots spend way more time listening and speaking
Most classes in schools or language courses focus on reading, learning vocabulary, and grammar which keeps students in their comfort zone. But nothing in your language learning will help you progress faster than speaking.
Polyglots are certainly rare and interesting people: only about 3% of the world's total population can speak four or more languages.
By translating into your target language, you learn vocabulary quickly. You have to look up the right words and since you are using them in a coherent sentence, you memorise them more quickly than if you were to learn them without context. Also, you start building sentences on your own early on.