How many languages can a person speak?

Ø 1) Answer the question asked in the title of the text.

Multilingualism is the use of two or more languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world’s population.

“A multilingual person,” in a broad definition, is a person who can communicate in more than one language, be it actively (through speaking or writing) or passively (through listening or reading).

More specifically, the terms “bilingual” and “trilingual” are used to describe comparable situations in which two or three languages are involved. Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language. The first language (sometimes also referred to as “the mother tongue”) is acquired without formal education. Children acquiring two languages in this way are called simultaneous bilinguals. Even in the case of simultaneous bilinguals one language usually dominates over the other. This kind of bilingualism is most likely to occur when a child is raised by bilingual parents in a predominantly monolingual environment. It can also occur when the parents are monolingual but have raised their child in two different countries.

As a legend goes, Buda spoke 150 languages, and Mahomet knew all the languages of the world. Among the other famous polyglots are Sir John Bowring (100 languages, with knowledge of 200+), Emil Krebs (68 languages), Uku Masing (65 languages), and not so many more. Such multilingual persons are “polyglots” (in Greek “poly” means “many,” and “glot” means “language”). But how many foreign languages should a person know to be considered a polyglot? More than two.

Heinrich Schliemann was a German businessman and archaeologist, and an advocate of the historical reality of places mentioned in the works of Homer. Schliemann was an important archaeological excavator of Troy, along with the Mycenaean sites Mycenae and Tiryns. His successes lent material weight to the idea that Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid reflect actual historical events. He spoke 13 languages, including his mother tongue and wrote his diary in the language of whatever country he happened to be in. By the end of his life, he could converse in English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Italian, Greek, Latin, Russian, Arabic, and Turkish as well as German. Schliemann’s ability with languages was an important part of his career as a businessman in the importing trade.

Kató Lomb was a Hungarian interpreter, translator, language genius and one of the first simultaneous interpreters of the world. Originally she graduated in physics and chemistry, but her interest soon led her to languages. Native in Hungarian, she was able to interpret fluently in nine or ten languages, and she translated technical literature and read belles-lettres in six languages. She was able to understand journalism in further eleven languages. As she put it, altogether she earned money with sixteen languages - Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Ukrainian. She learned these languages mostly by self-effort. Her aims to acquire these languages were most of all practical, to satisfy her interest.

According to her own account, her long life was highlighted not primarily by the command of languages but the actual study of them. Through her books, interviews, and conversations, she tried to share this joy of studying languages with generations. As an interpreter, she visited all five continents, saw forty countries, and reported about her experiences and adventures in a separate book “An interpreter around the world.”

Harold Williams was a New Zealand journalist, foreign editor of The Times and polyglot who is considered to have been one of the most accomplished polyglots in history, said to have known over 60 languages and other related dialects. He taught himself Latin, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Māori, Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, and other Polynesian languages when he was only eleven years old! He sat for his BA at Auckland University, but failed because of an inability to sufficiently master mathematics.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works “The Hobbit,” “The Lord of the Rings,” and “The Silmarillion.” Both Tolkien’s academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology. He was fluent in 13, yet knew 12 other languages, not including his self-constructed languages.

Ziad Youssef Fazah is a Lebanese polyglot who claims to speak 59 languages and maintains that he has proved this in several television shows, where he has successfully communicated with native speakers of a large number of foreign languages. He is considered the world’s greatest polyglot by the 1993 UK edition of the Guinness Book of Records. He works as a private teacher of languages in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Polyglots claim that any person with average abilities can master 5-6 languages during the lifetime. One only needs motivation, strong will, and courage. The tips that can help polyglot-beginners are the following: study regularly, always carry a pad and a pen with you, practice whenever possible, read as much as possible even if you don’t understand everything, and use every spare minute for revising the language. At one of the linguistic congresses he greeted the audience in 50 languages.

Ø 2) Scan the names typed in bold and say who of them you would like to read about.

Ø 3) Find the terms relating to the topic “languages” in the text.

Ø 4) Debate the statement “Any person with average abilities can master 5-6 languages during the lifetime.”

Ø 5) Develop the tips for polyglot-beginners suggested in the last paragraph of the text.