Giuseppe Gasparo Mezzofanti was an Italian cardinal known for being a hyperpolyglot.
Kató Lomb was a Hungarian interpreter, translator and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world. Originally educated in chemistry and physics, her interest soon led her to languages. Native in Hungarian, she could interpret fluently in nine or ten languages, translated technical literature, and read belles-lettres in six languages. She understood journalism in a further 11 languages. She stated that she worked professionally with 16 languages, which she learnt from self-study due to her interest in them.
A foreign language is a language that is not an official language of, nor typically spoken in, a specific country. Native speakers from that country usually need to acquire it through conscious learning, such as through language lessons at school, self-teaching, or attending language courses. A foreign language might be learned as a second language; however, there is a distinction between the two terms. A second language refers to a language that plays a significant role in the region where the speaker lives, whether for communication, education, business, or governance. Consequently, a second language is not necessarily a foreign language.
Language Spoken at Home is a data set published by the United States Census Bureau on languages in the United States. It is based on a three-part language question asked about all household members who are five years old or older. The first part asks if the person speaks a language other than English at home. If the answer is "yes", the respondent is asked what that language is. The third part of the question asks how well the person speaks English.
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. When the languages are just two, it is usually called Bilingualism. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Europeans claim to speak at least one language other than their mother tongue; but many read and write in one language. Being multilingual is advantageous for people wanting to participate in trade, globalization and cultural openness. Owing to the ease of access to information facilitated by the Internet, individuals' exposure to multiple languages has become increasingly possible. People who speak several languages are also called polyglots.
Fluency refers to continuity, smoothness, rate, and effort in speech production. It is also used to characterize language production, language ability or language proficiency.
The Hippo Family Club (ヒッポファミリークラブ) is the brainchild of an organization known as the Institute for Language Experience, Experiment & Exchange, also known as LEX. It was created in 1981 by Yo Sakakibara, who had been researching language acquisition for over 30 years prior to his death. The Hippo Family Club is a transnational network of community-based language clubs in which both children and adults engage in various activities with the purpose of acquiring multiple languages simultaneously. Yo Sakakibara later expanded the organization to the US, Korea, Japan and Mexico. In the United States, the organization is known as LEX America and the language clubs as LEX Language Project.
Timothy "Tim" Doner is an American hyperpolyglot, former social media personality and a foreign policy analyst at the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies, specializing in the Middle East and Central Asia. A graduate of Harvard University and the University of Cambridge, he rose to prominence at the age of 16 when he released a YouTube video in 2012 in which he spoke 20 different languages. He is a native of Manhattan, New York City and resident of the East Village.
Alexander Sabino Argüelles is an American linguist notable for his work on the Korean language. An avid language learner, he was profiled in Michael Erard's Babel No More. He is one of the polyglots listed in Kenneth Hyltenstam's Advanced Proficiency and Exceptional Ability in Second Languages, and has been described by The New Yorker as "a legendary figure in the [polyglot] community".
Brendan Richard Lewis is an Irish author and blogger who defines himself as a "technomad language hacker". He is best known for his website Fluent in 3 Months, on which he documents personal attempts to learn languages within short time periods, typically three months.
Powell Alexander Janulus 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.
Ioannis Ikonomou is a Greek translator who has been working for the European Commission in Brussels since 2002.
Dmitry Yuryevich Petrov is a Russian polyglot, simultaneous interpreter, lecturer, broadcaster, and teacher. He is a host of the reality show Polyglot on the TV channel Russia-K. Finished Translation School of Moscow State Linguistics University where he teaches, as of 2016, at the Department of Translation Studies and English Translation Practice. Since 2012 has his multilingual language school called Dmitry Petrov's Innovative Communication Linguistics Center that works using his 16 academic hour method Polyglot 16, implemented in eponymous course books and mobile applications.
50Languages, formerly Book2, is a set of webpages, downloadable audio files, mobile apps and books for learning any of 56 languages. Explanations are also available in the same 56 languages. It is free except for the optional books, and is cited in research on online language learning.
Steve Kaufmann is a Canadian polyglot and internet personality known for his language-learning content on YouTube, and his online language-learning platform LingQ, which he co-founded.
Philip Crowther is a British–German–Luxembourgish–American journalist, notable for being a polyglot. He has publicly spoken in fluent French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, and Luxembourgish. He is the White House correspondent for France 24, international affiliate correspondent for the Associated Press, and is a member of the White House Correspondents' Association.
Arieh Smith, better known as Xiaomanyc or simply Xiaoma, is an American YouTuber, best known for his videos where he speaks various languages with people from different cultures. The New York Times credited his channel as one of the most popular YouTube channels in this category, while voicing skepticism regarding the extent of his language proficiency. He has been profiled in news publications such as The Independent, The Indian Express, and The Daily Dot.
