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There's no reliable citation for Pete Buttigieg speaking 7 languages. Even the citation listed only says that he can order a sandwich in 7 languages. This should be deleted from the list unless there's a better citation.
This edit added some discussion of the difficulty of defining who is a polyglot. At the same time, though, it removed a source and mention of Richard Hudson's notion of "hyperpolyglot". User:LeemanBros and I have communicated on my talk page, but others may wish to contribute to discussion of the lead as well. Cnilep ( talk) 03:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
This is a strange idea for a page, and should be deleted. How can you have a list of Polygots on Wikipedia. A polyglot is someone who speaks three languages or more. There are millions of people who do that!!!! Deathlibrarian ( talk) 11:30, 20 February 2014 (UTC)
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Hi! I am mentioned in this article and the title of one of my books is written incorrectly.
Please change the title of Susanna Zaraysky's book to "Travel Happy, Budget Low". It was mistakenly written as "Travel Happy, Budget Law". If you need the Amazon links to my books, here they are:
Language is Music: http://www.amazon.com/Language-Is-Music-Foreign-Languages/dp/0982018991
Travel Happy, Budget Low: http://www.amazon.com/Travel-Happy-Budget-Low-Saving/dp/0982018983/ref=la_B003M95PHO_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397106876&sr=1-2
Sincerely, Susanna (nisamsuzi@yahoo.com) 76.237.2.186 ( talk) 05:17, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
The quote attributed to João Guimarães Rosa ("I speak: Portuguese, German, French" etc.) is in fact a translation from Portuguese ("VI – Falo: português, alemão, francês," etc.). The translation doesn't misrepresent the sense of the quote the blogger attributes to Guimarães Rosa, but it is not his exact words, either. Unfortunately Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Register#Foreign-language quotations is currently an empty section, so I'm not sure how such issues are generally handled. My personal advice would be to paraphrase rather than quote the source. Do others have thoughts on styling this? Cnilep ( talk) 02:21, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
The section "Notable living polyglots" cites a number of primary sources, user-generated web content, or other possibly unreliable material.Self-published or user-generated material such as YouTube or blogs is not considered reliable except in cases where the user is recognized as an established expert in the field. User-generated content generally should not be used to verify self-serving or exceptional claims such as speaking an unusual number of languages. Specifically:
Please find better sources to replace these questionable ones. Cnilep ( talk) 02:04, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
I listened to a couple of people on Youtube who are mentioned here as polyglots and who claim to speak German and Russian. Their ability according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages could be best described as something between A1 and A2 level. One example: someone here was speaking Russian with more than half the declension endings wrong. His German syntax was also pretty wrong and he was using a rather basic vocabulary, almost always talking about the same things he says in other languages.
And yet: even sites as The Economist say the person speaks Russian and German. Well: if A1 or A2 levels are enough for a given language, there are many more polyglots on Earth. What is the point to list these?
You can as well create a list of people who "know mathematics" based on the fact they know a little bit of arithmetic, a little bit of algebra and so on.
-- Periergeia ( talk) 15:01, 25 July 2014 (UTC)
I'm surprised that the polyglots arn't listed the langauge family group they know rather than the geography 75.61.129.158 ( talk) 23:02, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
It only mentions Richard Simcott (25+ languages) and Alex Rawlings (12+ languages) in passing, even though these were publicly recognized to be the most multilingual people in Britain (Alex as the "most multilingual student), and then mentions a whole lot of other people who don't even pass the "hyperpolyglot" criteria of speaking 11 languages, just because they're famous for something else entirely, like that Armenian football player.
Wouldn't it make more sense to list more people who speak 11+ or 25+ languages? Speaking 11+ languages still gives you a very long list of people; I am the head organizer of the Polyglot Gathering, where at least 80 participants spoke that many languages. If we can agree on what makes a person notable for this list, I am happy to contribute any number of names with citations of newspaper articles and similar.
Do keep in mind that other in the case of Alex Rawlings, Johan Vandewalle and similar, few polyglots have undergone an official examination, simply because it wasn't offered, and newspapers like to cite inflated numbers. For example, Timothy Doner himself said in an interview with the Economist that he is only fluent in 3-4 languages and speaks another 3-4 languages well, so nowhere near the 20+ that some journalists like to stick on him. However, polyglots are generally aware of each other and will test each other if someone makes an unlikely claim. Such was the case for Emanuele Marini, who showed up to the Polyglot Conference as an unknown with a name tag claiming 30+ languages: he got drafted into an impromptu on-camera demonstration of his skills, at least in the 16 languages for which native speakers were present. The result was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Deu-ayVcT-k , becoming an overnight sensation. Do such videos count if they involve more people than just the person himself? Otherwise it should be possible to find references to him in Polish news, he got interviewed on Polish national TV after they heard his flawless Polish...
So: what are the criteria for this list?
Junesun ( talk) 18:46, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
He knew 68 languages! /info/en/?search=Emil_Krebs 84.112.151.27 ( talk) 18:14, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
Swiss German is listed as one of the languages two (or possibly more) people on the list speak. But Swiss German is not a language. There are two reasons for that: Firstly, there is no (single) language called Swiss German. Swiss German is the expression used for (all the) German dialects spoken in Switzerland. There is no Standard Swiss German language. I am from Berne, Switzerland and a native Bernise German speaker. Most of the time I refer to myself as a native German speaker, since calling myself a native Bernise German speaker would hardly make sense. But to call myself a native Swiss German speaker would not make sense at all. There is no such language. Secondly, as already mentioned, the term Swiss German is used to refer to all German DIALECTS spoken in Switzerland. They are just dialects. So no langauges of their own. Learning (Standard) German as a Swiss toddler from the German speaking part of Switzerland does not mean the same as learning another language like for example Dutch or French. It just means to learn a different version of your native language. I speak the German dialect spoken in Berne, the German used in print media, English and French. This makes me a person who speaks three languages, not four. 178.197.236.9 ( talk) 18:41, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
This sounds like advertising. And this following sentence doesn't make sense at all: "It is difficult to judge which individuals are polyglots, as there is no uncontroversial definition for what it means to "master" a language, and because it is not always clear where to distinguish a dialect from a language."
These two things have nothing to do with each other. Mastering a language does not mean knowing all its dialects. It doesn't even apply to native speakers. So there are no native speakers who have mastered their native tongues? -- 2.245.113.233 ( talk) 12:50, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be some kind of threshold for inclusion? E.g. being bilingual and apart from that fluent in 3 additional languages doesn't really sound like being a polyglot.-- Fennomaani ( talk) 20:42, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
This article is really mainly a bunch of ininteresting blablablah with no academic source, and the authors giving his opinion about what is fluency or mastering language. Without sourcing, it's only opinion and is really not interesting to have on Wikipedia.
I removed the Rosetta Stone part, as it's not the purpose of this site. If you mention a software, mention other ones too. Anyway, Rosetta Stone has not really proved to be efficient. And everyone has a different opinon or different sources about it. Don't mention a software unless you mention the other ones, and research papers. Thanks.
This list is so small. According to the strict definition that a polyglot speaks three languages then a significant proportion of Africans should be listed here - speaking multiple languages is a way of life. And many Africans speak more languages than the people listed. For example Trevor Noah is a remarkable comedian but he is not a remarkable polyglot - I know plenty of South Africans that speak more languages than him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.161.116.190 ( talk) 19:01, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
@
Yopie: Twice you have reverted my contributions of removing {{
Cleanup}}
from the article without explaining in the edit summary why. Furthermore you have removed Riccardo Bertani from the list claiming unnotability, without making a counter-argument to my claim of
WP:REDLINK and potential existing significance at Italian Wikipedia. I feel like you've also used rollback disruptively to take credit for the removal of other two unnotable persons, instead of reverting each of the revisions individually. So please, explain your actions.
2001:2003:54FA:D2:0:0:0:1 (
talk)
03:22, 30 July 2017 (UTC)
Here it's not a matter of being "notable" people, it's a matter of actually speaking a lot of languages. And, I repeat, it's very easy to verify whether someone actually knows many languages or not. - Michele San Pietro — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.53.203.97 ( talk) 17:17, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
I've just added my name to the list of hyperpolyglots because I'm actually one and can prove what I say, the knowledge of a language is something very easy to verify. - Michele San Pietro — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.53.203.97 ( talk) 17:14, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
There are reliable sources that state that she is a polyglot [1] [2] and that she is fluent in several languages. [3] Thinker78 ( talk) 07:46, 9 May 2018 (UTC)
References
This WP:list has too much detail. Each item should have just one link, to the WP:Article about the person mentioned. What do others think? BeenAroundAWhile ( talk)L
Throughout the many people listed on this page, sometimes the languages they speak are linked and sometimes they are not.
Some examples taken from the list:
In the first example, all languages are linked, while in the second, none are. Shouldn't the list follow a more consistent linking system? - Alumnum ( talk) 11:06, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
I have added Steve Kaufmann, as he speaks 16 languages, which certainly qualifies him as a polyglot...in fact, he is currently living, one of the top 5 people currently living in terms of number of languages spoken. - see this article Please discuss the matter here before you remove him. Deathlibrarian ( talk) 15:33, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
Greetings! Mbote! Jambo! Bonjour! MY NAME IS ZEKEH GBOTOKUMA The list of Living African Polyglots is too short and understandably celebrity-oriented. While I would not speak for many African living polyglots who are on this list, I would not mind adding myself to the list. I am a Congolese-born U.S. citizen. I spent 12 years in Europe before migrating to the USA. I speak Ngbaka (native language), Lingala (one of DRC's four national languages), French, English, Italian, German, some Spanish. I am literate in Latin. I am the editor/author of "A Polyglot Pocket Dictionary of Lingala, English, French and Italian" (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016); Founder and President of Polyglots in Action for Diversity, Inc. (PAD), Baltimore Polyglots Meetup Group organizer. Last but not least, I am an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. I would not mind being added to the list of Polyglots, African and/or American. Thanks! Merci! Gracias! Grazie! Obrigado! Danke! Botondi! Matondo! Asante! Xie xie! Arigato! Gamsa hamnida! 2601:147:282:19D0:B441:9227:C300:1C24 ( talk) 21:02, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
I can't find a video of Pope Benedict XVI speaking Spanish. On the contrary, he gives interviews in English to Spanish TV. He indeed speaks German, Latin French and Italian. Besides, he needed Greek and Hebrew to get through his studies. So he still qualifies as a hyperpolyglot but barely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.198.175.7 ( talk) 15:43, 2 June 2022 (UTC)