| What Exactly Is A Hyperpolyglot?

ou cannot help but be impressed when you meet someone capable of speaking one or two languages other than their mother tongue. So, if you ever meet a hyperpolyglot, it’s gonna blow your mind. But is this really possible, and if so, how many languages can you learn in your lifetime? To answer this question, we need to explore what hyperpolyglots are so we can understand how they’re capable of learning so many different languages!

First, let’s see how we label people by the number of languages he or she is able to speak fluently or effortlessly. ILanguages.org gives the definitions below:

• A monolingual speaks only one language. Monolinguals constitute 40 percent of the world’s population.
• A bilingual person speaks two languages with almost an equal level of fluency. About 43 percent of the population in the world is bilingual and speak a second language.
• When you say a person is trilingual, it means that he or she is fluent in three languages. Thirteen percent of the global population is trilingual.
• A person who can speak four or more languages is multilingual. 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.  

You can see the pattern. If you meet someone who has a high degree of proficiency in over 12 languages, be truly amazed, because you are meeting a rare type of person – a hyperpolyglot.

This term was created by a London University College Professor Emeritus of Linguistics by the name of Richard Hudson.

Hyperpolyglots Of The World

Cardinal Guiseppe Mezzofanti is one of the world’s most popular hyperpolyglots. He was born in Bologna, Italy on September 19, 1774. He can speak 40 languages, although some people claim that he was able to speak nearly a hundred different languages.

These are some of the  most notable hyperpolyglots today:

• Alexander Argüelles, an American linguist who speaks 12 languages.
• Jeong Su-il, a historian from South Korea, who speaks 12 languages.
• Lokesh Chandra, an Indian Buddhism scholar who can speak 16 languages.
• Péter Frankl, Hungarian mathematician, educator, columnist, and street performer who speaks 12 languages.
• Swami Rambhadracharya of India, a Sanskrit scholar and Hindu religious leader who can speak 22 languages.
• Dilip Kumar, an Indian actor who can speak 12 languages.
• Ioannis Ikonomou, a Greek translator for the European Commission. He speaks 32 languages.
• Richard Simcott is fluent in 16 languages. He lives in Chester, United Kingdom. He can learn a new language within a short period.
• Fernando de Castro speaks 16 languages. He is an interpreter, translator, and philologist.
• Israel-born Ghil’ad Zuckermann is a hyperpolyglot, linguist, and revivalist. He currently resides in Australia. He’s a linguistics professor and Chairman of Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide.

TRIVIA

Ziad Youssef Fasah of Liberia claims that he can speak 59 languages fluently. He was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records until the 1998 edition. In 1997, during the Chilean ‘Viva el Lunes’ TV program, he was asked questions by special guests in Greek, Hindi, Persian, Chinese, Russian, Finnish and Egyptian Arabic. He only managed to answer the first question. In 2015, he claimed that the show was a ‘trap’ and that he was not informed that he was going to be tested, so he didn’t have time to prepare. But he also claimed that he could code switch among 15 languages without preparation.

How Do  People Learn So Many Languages?

It’s difficult to give a definite answer to the question. Several factors and different schools of thought give varied reasons as to why this is the case. Some people another language by reading. Other people could learn through film, radio or television, while some can learn a language through direct exposure and conversation with native speakers.

Babel No More: The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners (2012) is a book by Michael Erard. He is an American journalist and non-fiction writer. In this book, Erard proposes that disciplined study and good genes are keys to a person’s ability to learn a language.

This brings up other questions, such as whether polyglots’ ability is innate or if the ability to learn as many languages as possible gained could be gained over time.

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