List of polyglots

A polyglot is a person who uses multiple languages. A polyglot may also be called a multilingual person; the label "multilingual" is used for communities as well as individual speakers.

It is difficult to judge which individuals are polyglots, as there is no uncontroversial definition what it means to "master" a language or a or developed testing method to adequately ascertain more than a rudimentary level of language knowledge. Nonetheless, many people have been described or self-ascribe themself as a polyglot.

This list consists of people who have been noted in news media, historical texts, or academic work as speaking six or more languages fluently. For general discussion of the phenomenon, including discussion of polyglot savants, see polyglotism.

Notable living polyglots

Africa

• Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, a Ghanaian cardinal of the Catholic Church is able to speak English, Fante, French, Italian, German, and Hebrew, in addition to understanding Latin and Greek.

• Dikembe Mutombo, a former NBA player, is able to speak English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Tshiluba, Swahili, Lingala, and two other central African languages.

The Americas

• Alexander Arguelles, an American scholar of foreign languages who can read and fluently speak approximately thirty-six languages.

• Timothy Doner, a sixteen-year-old New York student, was featured in the New York Times for his ability to speak over twenty languages, such as: English, French, Hausa, Wolof, Russian, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic, Pashto, Persian, Chinese, Italian, Turkish, Indonesian, Dutch, Xhosa, Swahili, Hindi and Ojibwe. In June 2012, Doner published a 15-minute video of himself speaking twenty languages on his YouTube channel "PolyglotPal".

• Dr. Carlos do Amaral Freire, a Brazilian scholar, linguist, and translator who has publicly stated that he has studied over 100 languages, is considered one of the greatest scholars of the 21st century by the University of Cambridge. He has translated sixty languages into Portuguese and is engaged in a project that is more than forty-years-old to study two new languages every year.

• José Ángel Gurría, Mexican economist and current secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He speaks six languages: Spanish, French, English, Portuguese, Italian and German.

• Steve Kaufmann, former Canadian diplomat and cofounder of The Linguist Institute language company, can speak eleven languages: English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Swedish, German, Italian, Cantonese, Russian, and Portuguese. As of January 2012, Kaufmann was learning Korean and Czech.

Asia

• Swami Rambhadracharya, a Hindu religious leader, educationist, Sanskrit scholar, polyglot, poet, author, textual commentator, philosopher, composer, singer, playwright, and Katha artist based in Chitrakoot, India, can speak twenty-two languages, including Sanskrit, Hindi, English, French, Bhojpuri, Maithili, Oriya, Gujarati, Punjabi, Marathi, Magadhi, Awadhi, and Braj. Rambhadracharya has been blind since the age of two months; received no formal education until the age of seventeen years; has never used braille, or any other aid to learn or compose his works; and has authored more than 100 books.

• George Fernandes, an Indian politician who is well-versed in ten languages: Konkani, English, Hindi, Tulu, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Latin. As of April 2013, Fernandes is suffering Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

Europe

• Bulcsú László, a Croatian linguist, writer, translator, information scientist and accentologist, speaks more than 40 languages, including Akkadian, Hittite, Sumerian, Sanskrit... among English, French, German, Latin...

• Alex Rawlings, a 20-year-old undergraduate student at Oxford University, was named Britain's "most multilingual student" in 2012 after being tested for fluency by native speakers in 11 languages: English, Greek, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Hebrew, Catalan, Spanish and Afrikaans.

• Ioannis Ikonomou (1964), Greek translator at the European Commission. He can speak 32 languages fluently.

• Benny Lewis, an Irish polyglot who, as of September 2013, speaks 12 languages following ten years of traveling the world. Lewis has presented two TEDx talks and maintains a language learning website.

Notable dead reputed polyglots

The following list consists of deceased individuals who are associated with claims of polyglotism, by year of birth.

• Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963) could speak 36 languages and wrote in more than 6, total numbering 176.

• Mithridates VI of Pontus (134–63 BC) could supposedly speak the languages of all 22 nations within his kingdom.

• Cleopatra VII (69–30 BC), the last ruling Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, could, according to the Roman biographer Plutarch, speak nine languages and was the only member of her dynasty who could speak Egyptian as well as her native Greek.

• John Milton (1608–1674), an English poet who is famous for the epic work Paradise Lost, could speak English, Latin, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Aramaic, Syriac, and Old English. Milton coined 630 terms in the English language.

• Adam František Kollár (1718–1783), a Slovak writer, spoke Slovak, Czech, Serbian, Polish, Rusin, Russian, Belarussian, Ukrainian, Slovenian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, German, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, Chinese, Persian, Arabic, Italian, Romanian, French, Dutch, and English.

• Noah Webster (1758–1843), a lexicographer, English spelling reformer, and author, mastered 23 languages.

• Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (1774–1849), an Italian Cardinal, spoke 39 languages fluently.

• Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832), a French classical scholar, philologist, and orientalist, was the first to decipher the inscription on the Rosetta Stone, an achievement that facilitated the translation of the Egyptian Hieroglyphs—the titles "Father of Egyptology" and "the founder of scientific Egyptology" have since been bestowed upon Champollion. He specialized in Oriental languages while he was a student at the College de France between 1807 and 1809, and his linguistic repertoire eventually consisted of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Pahlavi, Arabic, Persian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Zend, and his native French.

• Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), a German-English industrialist, social scientist, and cofounder of Marxist theory alongside Karl Marx, mastered over 20 languages.

• José Rizal (1861–1896), the national hero of the Philippines, was also a practising ophthalmologist, artist, author, scientist, and established intellect. He visited numerous countries and had varying degrees of fluency in 22 languages including his native Tagalog, Spanish, Japanese, German, French, Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Malay, Latin, and Greek.

• Harold Williams (1876–1928), a New Zealand journalist and linguist, spoke more than 58 languages.

• Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969), the Vietnamese Communist leader, became fluent in French, English, Russian, Cantonese, and Mandarin, in addition to his native Vietnamese, through study and many years spent in exile.

• S. Srikanta Sastri (1904–1974), eminent Indian Historian, Indologist, and epigraphist at the University of Mysore, was fluent in over fourteen languages, including Greek, Latin, Hittite, Sanskrit, Pali, and Prakrit.

• João Guimarães Rosa (1908–1967) was a Brazilian writer, considered by many to be one of the greatest Brazilian novelists born in the 20th century and a self-taught polyglot. "I speak: Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, some Russian; I read: Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary right next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar of: Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, Danish; I dabbled in others. But all at a very basic level. And I think that studying the spirit and the mechanism of other languages helps a great deal in the deeper understanding of the national language [of Brazil]. In general, however, I studied for pleasure, desire, distraction".

• Uku Masing (1909–1985), an Estonian linguist, theologian, ethnologist, and poet, claimed to know approximately 65 languages and could translate 20 languages.

• Kató Lomb (1909–2003), a Hungarian interpreter, translator, and one of the first simultaneous interpreters in the world, was able to interpret fluently in 10 languages.

• P. B. Sreenivas (1930-2013), an Indian singer and poet, spoke and wrote in eight languages, including Kannada, English and Urdu.

• Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930–1989), a Middle Eastern political activist and economist, mastered eight languages that included his mother tongue.

• Kenneth L. Hale (1934–2001) was an American professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He spoke over 50 languages, including Basque, Dutch, French, Hopi, Irish Gaelic, Japanese, Jemez, Lardil, Navajo, O'odham, Polish, Spanish, Warlpiri, and Wômpanâak.