Tens of languages in one life time?

Question

Is it realistic to try learning dozens of languages, and even achieving fluency in 5-6 of them?

Answer 1

Fluency in five or six languages is not unrealistic.  I know several people who have acheived that, mostly because they moved about a lot as children and were from ethnically mixed households.

"Dozens" may be unrealistic.  Since it takes a couple of years to master one language, it's hard to see how one could master more than 20 in a normal lifespan.

Answer 2

If it's any help, autistic savant Daniel Tammet is fluent in eleven languages.

Answer 3

Michel Thomas was a famous polyglot and a great teacher. His learning method was based on giving emphasis to the similarities of the vocabulary between languages of the same family. I have tried it myself with spanish and german. I wasn't though very persistent, so I have forgotten most things by now, but at least I spent some very educative hours listening to his recordings. I think you can find some way to listen samples of his work. They are quite popular among the net users.

Answer 4

I think it's definitely realistic to learn at least 5-6, especially if you learn lots of languages that are in the same family. For example, it would be far easier to learn, say, Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, and Japanese, Chinese and Korean together than if you were to pick completely unrelated languages (like Dutch, Hindi, Arabic, French, Swahili etc.)

The other thing with languages is, you'll probably spend your entire life learning them. I don't think anyone here can honestly say they know 100% of the English vocabulary - or whatever their first language is. It's very rewarding though, and the more languages you can communicate in, the more countries you can visit without feeling too much like a tourist. Good luck!

Answer 5

that's possible, but be quick since more and more languages are getting extinguished because of dominance of modern & industrial languages.

Answer 6

unless your going to use them i don't see the point, but i guess it's a good hobby, better than smoking.