All you have to do is look around the world to see amazing feats occurring every day. People from all over the world are accomplishing amazing things, and all it takes is the ability to go online to see it all. Lance Armstrong is a great example of someone who was able to accomplish so much against mounting odds stacked against him. There are people in the world that are considered to be the fastest swimmer, the fastest runner or the best boxer in the world. So why then couldn’t there be a linguist who was capable of learning a massive amount of languages?
Which begs the question, how many languages can someone realistically learn?
It’s Far More Than You Could Imagine
Can someone learn hundreds of languages and speak them all fluently? The fourth governor of Hon Kong, a man named John Bowring claimed to have learned 200 languages and had the ability to speak 100 of them. Another gentleman by the name of Cardinal Joseph Casper Mezzofanti claimed to know 70 languages and could speak 38, and he had never once left Italy, his homeland. A Brazilian linguist by the name of Dr. Carlos Do Amaral Freire knew 100 languages.
What Does It Mean to Speak a Language?
A lot of people think it means the ability to speak anything foreign language with ease. There are also many people who claim to know a language just because they can speak a few sentences in a chosen language.
Speaking a foreign language means that you have the ability to speak to native speakers without difficulty. Pronunciation should be evident as well as the ability to understand all words spoken to you by a native speaker. The ability to understand the structure and grammar of a language is paramount to truly knowing the language you are speaking.
It’s Important to be in Constant Study of Language
These great men that could speak hundreds of languages did so because they were in a constant state of studying the languages. Imagine how easy it would be to forget certain aspects of a language if you never looked at it after a year, and how much worse after five years? It doesn’t even require a great deal of study. It’s almost like riding a bike. If you haven’t studied in awhile, it would still only take you about a week to get back on track with the language, but if you never do it, then the language could disappear.
Can You Be Fluent in Many Languages?
Believe it or not, the ability to be fluent in many languages is dependent on your lifestyle. If your life would be greatly benefited by the ability to speak 20 languages, then chances are you can. If your lifestyle is more monolingual, then chances are learning multiple languages could be difficult for you.
What it comes down to is the will and desire to learn a language. If you have the time to put in some studying and constant practice, then you could learn as many languages as you want. Aside from that, there is no reason why any human could not learn as many languages as they want to.
