From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Richard Hudson,
professor emeritus of linguistics at University College London, coined
the term "hyperpolyglot" for a person who can speak six or more
languages fluently.[1][2] Other
scholars apply the label to speakers of even more languages – twelve, sixteen,
or in the most extreme cases even fifty or more.[3]
It is difficult to judge which
individuals are polyglots, as there is no uncontroversial definition what it
means to "master" a language.
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.
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o
1.3 Asia
·
2 Notable deceased reputed polyglots
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This section of a biographical
article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2014) |
The 2012 book Babel No More[4] by
Michael Erard highlights some polyglots around the globe, including Alexander
Arguelles. Canada's Global TV also brought out a piece on hyperpolyglots on
their 16x9 show, entitled "Word Play",[5] featuring
Canadian polyglots Axel Van Hout, Alexandre Coutu, Steve Kaufmann, James Chang
and Keith Swayne. Tim Doner (US) and Richard Simcott (UK) also appear in the
programme to describe their experiences speaking multiple languages.
·
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.[6]
·
Dikembe Mutombo,
a former NBA player, is able to speak English, French, Portuguese, Spanish,
Tshiluba, Swahili, Lingala, and two other central African languages.[7]
·
Alexander Arguelles, an
American scholar of foreign languages who can read and fluently speak
approximately thirty-six languages.[8]
·
Timothy Doner,
then 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, Mandarin, Italian, Turkish, Indonesian, Dutch,
Xhosa, Swahili, Hindi and Ojibwe.[9] In
June 2012, Doner published a 15-minute video of himself speaking twenty
languages on his YouTube channel "PolyglotPal".[10]
·
Dr. Carlos do Amaral
Freire, a Brazilian scholar, linguist, and translator who has publicly stated
that he has studied over 100 languages,[11] 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.[12]
·
Luis Miguel Rojas
Berscia, currently doing a PhD at the Max Planck Institut for Psycholinguistics
is a Peruvian linguist. He speaks thirty two languages.[13] He
has been featured in Peruvian talk-shows (e.g. 3G and Fulanos y Menganos on
Plus TV), and on radio shows such as Palabra del Perú,[citation
needed], in the German newspaper
Westfälische Rundschau and Channel 13 from Tierra del Fuego - Argentina.
·
Susanna Zaraysky is a
Russian born polyglot. Zaraysky has studied Russian, English, French, Spanish,
Italian, Portuguese, Serbian, Ladino, Hebrew, Arabic and Hungarian. She has
written two books, Language is
Music and Travel Happy, Budget Low.[14]
·
Swami Rambhadracharya,
a Hindu religious leader and Sanskrit scholar 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.[15][16][17]
·
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.[18]
·
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.[19]
·
Bulcsú László, a Croatian
linguist, writer, translator, information scientist and accentologist, speaks
more than 40 languages, including Akkadian, Hittite, Sumerian, Sanskrit,
English, French, German, and Latin.[20]
·
Frans Timmermans,
A Dutch politician and diplomat, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs (since 2012). Speaks seven languages; Dutch, Limburgish, English, German, French, Italian and Russian.[21]
·
Ioannis Ikonomou (1964),
Greek translator at the European Commission. He can speak 32
languages fluently.[22]
·
Zdeno Chára is a Slovakian professional Ice Hockey
player in the NHL who speaks seven languages. These are:
Slovak, Czech, Polish, Swedish, Russian, German and English.[23]
The following list consists of
deceased individuals who are associated with claims of polyglotism, by year of
birth.
·
Mithridates VI of Pontus (134–63 BC) could supposedly speak the
languages of all 22 nations within his kingdom.[24]
·
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.[citation
needed]
·
Athanasius Kircher (1601?-1680), German Jesuit polymath
and scholar. Claimed knowledge of 12 languages; among them: Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Coptic,
as well as several modern languages. He also pioneered the study of Ancient Egyptian
hieroglyphics and Classical Chinese characters.[citation
needed]
·
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.[25]
·
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.[26]
·
Noah Webster (1758–1843), a lexicographer, English spelling reformer, and author,
mastered 23 languages.[citation
needed]
·
Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (1774–1849), an Italian Cardinal,
spoke the following 39 languages fluently:[27] Biblical
Hebrew, Rabbinical Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, Coptic, Ancient Armenian, Modern
Armenian, Persian, Turkish, Albanian, Maltese, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek,
Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch,
English, Illyrian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Chinese, Syriac, Ge'ez,
Hindustani, Amharic, Gujarati, Basque, Wallachian, and Algonquin.
·
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"[28] and
"the founder of scientific Egyptology" have since been bestowed upon
Champollion.[29] 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.[28][29][30]
·
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), a German-English
industrialist, social scientist,
and cofounder of Marxist theory alongside Karl Marx,
mastered over 20 languages.[31]
·
James Augustus Henry Murray (1837-1915), was a Scottish
lexicographer, instrumental in the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary,
and its primary editor from 1879 until his death. In an application letter
written to the British Museum Library in November 1866, he claimed abilities in
Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, and Latin, and "in a less degree"
Portuguese, Provençal, Dutch, German, Flemish, and Danish. The letter also
referred to Murray's study of Celtic, Russian, Persian, Hebrew, and Syriac,
among other languages and dialects.[32]
·
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) French Symbolist poet.
After retiring from writing he went on ambitious language learning program
while traveling around Europe and the Middle East; mastering Latin, Ancient and
Modern Greek, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Dutch, Arabic, Hindi,
Amharic,[33] as
well as developing a working knowledge of several native African languages
while living in Ethiopia.[34]
·
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), Serbian-American
inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for
his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC)
electricity supply system. Read and memorized many entire books, and was capable
of speaking eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German,
Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.[35][full citation needed]
·
Ludwig Zamenhof (1859-1917), creator of the
constructed language Esperanto, spoke 11
languages besides his own: Aramaic, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Polish,
his native Russian, Volapük,
and Yiddish.
He also had an interest inArabic, Italian,
and Lithuanian, though he never claimed
fluency in those.
·
José Rizal (1861–1896), was a Filipino
nationalist, writer and revolutionary. He was able to speak 22 languages
including Spanish, French, Latin, Greek, German,
Portuguese, Italian, English, Dutch, and Japanese. Rizal also made translations
from Arabic, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew and Sanskrit. He
translated the poetry of Schiller into his native Tagalog.
In addition he had at least some knowledge of Malay, Chavacano, Cebuano,
Ilocano, and Subanun.[36][37][38][39]
·
Harold Williams (1876–1928), a New Zealand journalist
and linguist, spoke more than 58 languages.[40]
·
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.[41]
·
Mahapandit Rahul Sankrityayan (1893-1963) could speak 36 languages
and wrote in more than 6.[42]
·
William James Sidis (1898-1944), an American child prodigy who knew eight foreign languages (Latin, Greek, German, French, Russian, Hebrew, Turkish and Armenian)
when eight-years old and claimed to speak about forty languages shortly before
his death. He also created his own artificial language, which was called Vendergood.
Although Sidis was supposed to have an IQ between
250 and 300 measured through psychological analyisis, this was never confirmed.[citation
needed]
·
Sukarno (1901–1970), the first President of Indonesia, was able to speak Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, Indonesian, Dutch, German, English,
French, Arabic, and Japanese.[43]
·
John von Neumann (1903-1957), mathematician. While
better known for his work in mathematics, Von Neumann was a polyglot; fluent in French, German, Latin, Greek, English, Yiddish,
as well as his native Hungarian[citation
needed]
·
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.[44][45]
·
Nathan Leopold
Jr. (1904-1971) was
born to a wealthy Jewish family. He spoke his first words at 4 months. He
reportedly had an intelligence quotient of 210, and claimed to have been able
to speak 27 languages by the time he was 19.[46] More
likely he was only fluent in 9 or 10 languages.[47] He
was involved in the murder of Robert "Bobby" Franks with friend
Richard Loeb. He served in prison for 33 years before receiving parole.
·
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. In a letter he claimed to speak Portuguese, German,
French, English, Spanish,
Italian, Esperanto, and some Russian.
He also claimed to read Swedish, Dutch,
Latin and Greek,
but with the use of a dictionary. He also professed some understanding of German dialects,
and study of Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi,Hebrew,
Japanese, Czech, Finnish,
and Danish grammar. Guimarães Rosa suggested that
studying other languages helped him understand the national language of Brazil
more deeply, but that he studied primarily for pleasure.[48]
·
Uku Masing (1909–1985), an Estonian linguist,
theologian, ethnologist, and poet, claimed to know approximately 65 languages
and could translate 20 languages.[49]
·
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.[50]
·
George Campbell (1912–2004), a Scottish polyglot and a
linguist at the BBC, who could speak and write fluently in at least 44
languages and had a working knowledge of perhaps 20 others.[51]
·
P. B. Sreenivas (1930-2013), an Indian singer and
poet, spoke and wrote in eight languages, including Kannada, English and Urdu.[52]
·
Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930–1989), a Kurdish political
activist and economist, mastered eight languages that included his mother tongue.[53][54][55]
·
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.[56][57]