What is the maximum number of languages a person can speak?

Question

How many languages do you speak? What is the maximum number of languages you personally know a person speak? What is the record for the most languages spoken by a single person?

Answer 1

the number of languages a person can speak is limited only to the amount of time and effort one has to put into learning them.

i know Barry Farber, the journalist and radio host, and he not only can speak at least 20+ that i know of to varying degrees of fluency, but he is continually learning new ones...

Answer 2

I have a cousin that can speak 27 different languages fluently. I can only speak English fluently, but I can speak some Japanese and a tad bit of Spanish as well... (More j*p then Span.)

Answer 3

It's not a matter of how many they can speak, but a matter of how much time you have to learn them.  The human brain is hardwired to learn languages, so it's just how much time you can dedicate to them.

Sir John Bowring (1792-1872), who "was said

to have spoken 100 languages and read another 100."

Answer 4

i don't think theres a limit

i know someone that knows 5

Answer 5

Until now I don't think is a limit. At least there is not more language to learn. WR says 190 is the best someone ever did.

I want to learn my second language well, you see how far am I? What abt you????

Answer 6

- Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz born 1872, dead 1944, spoke 189 languages.

- Carlos Amaral, claims to speak 170 languages.

- Ziad Fazah born June 10, 1954, claims to speak 58 languages.

- Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti (1774-1849), Italian ecclesiast, is reported to have spoken thirty-eight languages and fifty dialects fluently.

- Emil Krebs German sinologist (1867-1930). Spoke 68 languages fluently, and understood more than 50 further languages.

- Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val, was said to speak up to 63 languages and dialects.

- Kenneth Hale (1934-2001), MIT linguistics professor (over 50 languages)

- Rolf Theil Endresen, Norwegian linguistics professor (over 50 languages)

- Georg Sauerwein(1831-1904), German linguist (over 50 languages)

- The German Francis Sommer, who died in 1978, was said to be fluent in 94 languages.

- Carlos do Amaral Freire has mastered more than a hundred languages, published translations from 60 languages, but is a fluent speaker of 90. He still studies one or two new languages every two years.

- Hans Conon von der Gabelentz (1807-1874) reportedly was fluent in eighty languages.

- Uku Masing (1909-1985), an Estonian linguist, theologian, ethnologist, and poet who was fluent in approximately 65 languages and translated from 20.

- Istvan Dabi, Hungarian translator, translated from 103 languages

- Sir William Jones (1746-1794), British philologist - reported to speak forty-one languages.

- Robert Stiller - Polish, speaks about 60 languages

- Harold Williams, New Zealand journalist and linguist, spoke over 58 languages.

- Andrzej Gawroski (1885 - 1927) - Polish linguist, professor of Jagiellonian University and Lviv University, could speak and write in 40 languages, understood and could read in about 100.