Are you a polyglot? If you can speak multiple languages, you’re a polyglot. But all true polyglots know this, right?
Learning the language is the most sure-fire way to quickly integrate into the local culture. Most Americans take a stab at it but some become fluent, and quickly.
Linguistically speaking, the majority of Americans fall into the monolingual category, which is a person who knows only one language, most likely English. About 40 percent of the world is monolingual. What is surprising, though, is that 60 percent of the world speaks at least two languages. About 43 percent of the world is bilingual. Higher up the linguistic ladder are trilingual (about 13 percent of the world), multilingual (about 3 percent of the world speaks four or more languages) and the aforementioned polyglot, which has been the apex of language proficiency. Less than 1 percent of the world speaks more than five languages.
The BBC now reports that a recent meeting of polyglots in Berlin turned up a new category: hyperglots, or those who can speak 10 or more languages fluently. Polyglots and hyperglots have trained their memories to master many different tongues. The BBC says procedural memory is used to perfect an accent and declarative memory provides vocabulary. If you want to achieve fluency, you will need to remember about 10,000 words.
It was thought until recently that there was a narrow window, primarily childhood, for learning other languages well. But new research shows just a slight decline in the ability to learn a new language as we age. In fact, many of the super hyperglots convening in Berlin mastered multiple languages later in life.
How did hyperglots pick up all of those languages? Most are expats who move from country to country and learn the language to quickly fit in. Does intelligence or mental acuity have anything to do with an ability to learn a foreign language? No, says the BBC report, but if you have strong analytical skills, it makes learning a language faster.
One of the positive results of learning your local language is what the BBC calls a “chameleon effect,” you actually take on the identity of the country you’re living in. Various studies have shown that multilingual people often adopt different behaviors according to the language they are speaking.
Which begs the question: If you speak French, will you become more romantic?
