Who swallows the polyglot? What is it or who is it?

In the modern world, the topic of learning languages is incredibly relevant. In our time, when there is unlimited access to information and travel, the knowledge of one, and better of several foreign languages, can be compared to a key that opens a lot of doors. These keys have a polyglot. What is he doing for this?

English is not the limit

Polyglots are called people who know several foreign languages. Usually it means knowledge of at least five. There is no single standard, how many languages a polyglot should know. What is five languages for him? Now it is not such a rarity to know several languages. A respected polyglot owns 10 or more languages. And all because teaching materials are now available as never before. It is enough to connect to the Internet, and you can watch movies, videos, read books in foreign languages, communicate with people from the most remote corners of the world.

Nevertheless, polyglots are also ordinary people, not supercomputers. Most polyglots can speak fluent in some language, but do not necessarily know it well enough, and when they can read in several languages, they can not speak well.

Famous Polyglots

Since ancient times, the possession of foreign languages was considered a distinctive feature of educated and cultured people. Most of the known historical figures knew several languages.

The first known polyglot was Mitridat Evpator, ruler of the Pontian kingdom. Contemporaries claimed that he knew 22 languages. It helped him manage the army and his subjects, who came from different nations.

The Egyptian queen Cleopatra is known not only for her beauty and novels, but also as a wise and educated woman, a brilliant diplomat and speaker. She spoke ten languages.

The minister of the Vatican Library, Giuseppe Mezzofanti, read and spoke in 60 languages, and wrote poetry for 50 of them. According to some reports, he owned 80 languages.

Kato Lomb is a Hungarian writer who became one of the first interpreters in the world. It is interesting that at school she was a lagging student. Then she independently mastered 16 languages, and even wrote a book about her own method of studying languages. The most famous is the polyglot. English, Hungarian, Russian, French, German, Chinese - that's an incomplete list of her achievements.

Many people have for centuries bore the proud title of a polyglot. What was special about these people? It is likely that you too can become one of them.

How to become a polyglot

There is an opinion that you need a special talent for learning languages. However, the polyglots themselves say that abilities constitute only a small part of potential success.

Are there any special qualities that a polyglot possesses? What exactly perseverance and motivation they know better than most people. It's hardest to learn the first foreign language, in the future it will be easier, and it will happen faster. It is easiest to learn several languages of one group, for example English and German, Spanish and Italian.