Ever heard about this guy:
http://www.foreignlanguageexpertise.com/index.html

Yes, actually. I read about him on a site about notable polyglots, and saw some of his videos on Youtube. Reading his biography is crazy - he took positions in South Korea and Beirut to learn Korean and Arabic, because the languages he was learning already weren't hard enough.

I only wish I had that kind of time to devote to languages. I'll probably end up competent in five or six at the most.

I had actually found him on youtube as well when I did a search for Icelandic. I got hooked and ended up watching all his videos. Really informative and interesting. Thanks for posting the site.

I'd never heard of him until now. I like the way he breaks down his ability in each language he has studied.

He has his own page on Wikipedia. He appears in this list of notable polyglots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism#Polyglots

Although some of these claims are rather, er, dubious. 100-200 languages? No way.

I think that list also contains the languages he understands or all the languages he tried to learn. Even I can in whole understand about 20 languages but I can only like speak 4.

I never knew that J.R.R. Tolikien was a polyglot!


I have to agree.

Well it's all the languages he has some proficiency in - reading, writing or speaking - and he is fluent or near-fluent in most of them. He also has a huge collection of materials for other languages which he isn't fluent in.
I'm curious - do you mean you can skim through them, or understand everything?

Well not everything. False friends and upper index can be troublesome, but with a help of a dictionary I can pretty much understand everything.

You mean upper register?

I'd like to know languages you can understand (I'm assuming they're mostly Slavic) and which you have studied.