• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

How Many Languages Can One Person Learn In A Lifetime?

September 6, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Over half of the world’s population speaks more than one language. However, as little as 1 percent of the planet’s people can be considered a polyglot, defined as someone who can speak five or more languages. Moreover, there are some individuals known as hyperpolyglots, linguistic maestros that master an abundance of language (although there’s no strict definition of how many languages are required before you are welcomed into this elite group).

Advertisement

History is full of this fascinating species. There’s Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (1774-1849), an Italian Cardinal who purportedly spoke more than 38 languages fluently, as well as Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong from 1854 to 1859, who claimed to know 200 languages and could speak 100.

These claims, however, have never been robustly verified (more on that later) and history has a tendency to regurgitate tall tales not wholly based on truth. 

Theoretically, there is no definitive limit to the number of languages a human brain can comprehend. It’s also an impossibly tricky thing to quantify; is it harder to grasp the basics of hundreds of languages or deeply understand a handful?

In 2018, the New Yorker took a deep dive into the world of hyperpolyglots and reported that many “winced at the question” when asked how many languages they speak. Simply put, it’s not easy – or even useful – to count the number of conquered languages. 

“No one masters all the nuances of a language. It’s a false standard, and one that gets raised, ironically, mostly by monoglots – Americans in particular,” Richard Simcott, a British hyperpolyglot who organizes the annual Polyglot Conference, said in an interview with the magazine. 

Advertisement

There is also the problem of substantiating the claims of hyperpolyglots. If someone claimed they spoke 10 of the world’s rarest languages, would they have to gather native speakers from every corner of the globe to prove it? 

Case in point, there is the infamous tale of Ziad Fazah, a semi-celebrity of Lebanese heritage who spent large parts of his life in Africa and South America. Up until 1998, he held the Guinness World Record for the most languages spoken after claiming he had learned 59 world languages, from Arabic and Spanish to Swahili and Tajik.

However, many felt that parts of his story were fishy, to say the least. In 1997, he appeared on a Chilean TV show called Viva El Lunes in which he was grilled by audience members from around the world, including Egypt, Finland, Iran, Russia, China, Greece, and India.

It became apparent that Fazah had overstated his competence in many of these languages and failed to answer some of the basic questions. 

Advertisement



He later said the TV show was an essential set-up by sensation-seeking producers who didn’t tell him he’d be tested live on the show. He told La Cuarta newspaper in 2020: “I hadn’t practiced for a long time. The truth is, it was a huge embarrassment.”

Whether you can speak two or 200 languages, it’s evident that the brain always holds a special place for our native tongue. A study published earlier this year by scientists at MIT analyzed the brains of polyglots as they mused over their many languages.

The same brain regions “lit up” when they listened to any of the languages they spoke and the activity was stronger in those in which the speaker is more proficient – except for their native language. Whenever they listened to their primary language, activity in the brain network was significantly lower. 

Advertisement

“Something makes it a little bit easier to process – maybe it’s that you’ve spent more time using that language – and you get a dip in activity for the native language compared to other languages that you speak proficiently,” Evelina Fedorenko, an associate professor of neuroscience at MIT and the senior author of the study, said in a statement.

Becoming a true hyperpolyglot is said to be a Herculean feat that requires years of dedication, but you don’t need to achieve any superlative challenges to gain some clear benefit from learning multiple languages.

A study from 2020 suggested that multilingualism may delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The learning of another language does not prevent or reverse dementia, as such, but it does help to strengthen and reorganize the brain’s circuits. This is particularly useful when the brain is put under strain in old age as it helps distribute activity throughout more brain circuits.

Granted, learning 10 languages won’t increase this effect by 10-fold, but dabbling in a bunch of different dialects is unlikely to harm you. 

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. UK PM Johnson to reshuffle his ministers on Wednesday – source
  2. Greenland Has Changed Its Clocks For The Last Time, Embracing Daylight Savings Forever
  3. Do You Actually Need To Wash A Washing Machine?
  4. SpaceX Reveals Spacesuit For First Commercial Spacewalk Taking Place This Summer

Source Link: How Many Languages Can One Person Learn In A Lifetime?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • 24-Million-Year-Old Protein Fragments Are Oldest Ever Recovered, A Robot Listened To Spoken Instructions And Performed Surgery, And Much More This Week
  • DNA From Greenland Sled Dogs – Maybe The World’s Oldest Breed – Reveals 1,000 Years Of Arctic History
  • Why Doesn’t Moonrise Shift By The Same Amount Each Night?
  • Moa De-Extinction, Fashionable Chimps, And Robot Surgery – No Human Required
  • “Human”: Powerful New Images Mark The Most Scientifically Accurate “Hyper-Real 3D Models Of Human Species Ever”
  • Did We Accidentally Leave Life On The Moon In 2019 – And Could We Revive It?
  • 1.8 Million Years Ago, Two Extinct Humans Had One Of The Gnarliest Deaths In History
  • “Powerful Image” Of One Of The World’s Rarest Tigers Exposes The Real Danger In Taman Negara
  • Evolution, Domestication, And A Lot Of Very Good Boys: How Wolves Became Dogs
  • Why Do Orcas Have White Spots Near Their Eyes?
  • Tomb Of First King Of Ancient Maya City Discovered In Belize
  • The Real Reason The Tip Of Your Tape Measure Wiggles Like That
  • The “Haunting” Last Message From NASA’s Opportunity Rover, Sent From Inside A Planet-Wide Storm
  • Adorable Video Proves Not All Gorillas Hate The Rain. It Might Even Win One A Mate
  • 5,000-Year-Old Rock Art May Show One Of Ancient Egypt’s First Rulers
  • Alzheimer’s-Linked Protein Levels “20 Times Higher” In Newborn Babies – What Does This Mean?
  • Americans Were Asked If They Thought Civil War Was Coming. The Results Were Unexpected
  • Voyager 1 & 2 Could Be Detected From Almost A Light-Year Away With Our Current Technology
  • Dams Have Nudged Earth’s Poles By Over 1 Meter In The Past 200 Years
  • This Sugar Could Be A Cure For Male Pattern Baldness – And It’s Been In Our Bodies All Along
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version