hyperpolyglot
noun

- a person who learns and speaks many different languages

- one who masters or becomes fluent in many different languages

Macmillan Dictionary / Wiktionary

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WORD ORIGIN

“Polyglot” stems from the 1650s, perhaps via Medieval Latin polyglottus, from Greek polyglōttos “speaking many languages,” literally “many-tongued”, from polys “many” + glōtta, literally “tongue”.

The term “hyperpolyglot” was coined in 1999 by Richard Hudson, London University College Professor Emeritus of Linguistics.

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LINGUAL-LEVELS AS % OF GLOBAL POPULATION

- Monolinguals, one language = 40%

- Bilinguals, two languages = 43%

- Trilinguals, three languages = 13%

- Multilinguals, four languages = 3%

- Polyglots, 5 to 11 languages = < 1%

- Hyperpolyglots, 12 or more languages

Sources: Bilingualism in 2022: US, UK & Global Statistics, ResearchGate, Language Testing International (LTI)

NOTABLE HYPERPOLYGLOTS

- Alexander Argüelles, an American linguist, 12 languages

- Jeong Su-il, a historian from South Korea, 12 languages

- Lokesh Chandra, an Indian Buddhism scholar, 16 languages

- Swami Rambhadracharya, a Sanskrit scholar and Hindu religious leader, 22 languages

- Ioannis Ikonomou, a Greek translator for the European Commission, 32 languages

Fluency in a language comes in different levels. You are fluent when you can confidently hold a complex conversation with only a few mistakes and hesitations. On the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL) scale, confident fluency begins at B2:

A Levels: A1 = Beginner, A2 = Elementary

B Levels: B1 = Intermediate, B2 = Upper intermediate

C Levels: C1 = Advanced, C2 = Proficiency

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THE MANY LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

There are currently about 7139 spoken languages in the world, of which around 25% are spoken by less than 1000 speakers. Around 2000 languages are in danger of extinction.

- Papua New Guinea is considered the most diverse linguistic country in the world with nearly 850 languages spoken, more than twice the number of languages spoken across Europe.

- Indonesia has 709 languages with Indonesian as the official language. Most other languages are Austronesian, a language family widely spoken throughout Southeast Asia, Madagascar, the islands of the Pacific Ocean and Taiwan.

- Nigeria has 527 languages. English, spoken by 60 million people, is augmented by many other languages from the Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic language families.

- India has 454 languages with English and Hindi being the official ones. Hindi, after English, Standard Chinese, and Spanish, stands as the fourth most widely spoken language in the world.

- The USA has 347 spoken languages. Although English dominates, Native Americans and European immigrants contribute greatly to linguistic diversity.

- China has more than 300 spoken languages with Standard Chinese (Mandarin) being the official language spoken by over 70% of the population.

Sources: Ethnologue, Linguistic Society of America, Statistics&Data

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“According to a BBC estimation, there are less than 1000 HYPERPOLYGLOTS alive in the world.”

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