How many languages can you speak?

If you are one of the roughly 43% of the world’s population who speak two languages fluently: good for you!

But don’t fear if you only speak one language, around 40% of the world are with you, being monolingual.

As for the other 7%? These people are multilingual, meaning that they can speak fluently in multiple languages – some people three or four, while a tiny minority speak more than 5.

These people are known as polyglots.

There is no real knowledge of how many languages it is possible to learn to speak fluently, as a recent article from IFLScience found out.

One person, Ziad Fazah, held the Guinness World Record for most languages spoken, claiming to speak 59 languages fluently.

However, there was a lot of speculation over whether his claims were exaggerated.

But even Mr Fazah spoke only a tiny fraction of the world’s 7,164 total languages!

Regardless of how many languages you speak, there is always a preference in your brain for your native language.

That’s according to a recent study by researchers at MIT, who worked with 34 polyglots (including 16 hyperpolyglots, with knowledge of 10+ languages).

In the experiment, each of the test subjects had proficiency in at least five languages, but were only raised speaking one single language.

Of the 34 participants, 16 spoke over 10 languages to some degree, whilst one spoke 54.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, the researchers observed the participants’ brains as they listened to passages read in different languages.

The passages included Bible stories and excerpts from Alice in Wonderland.

The languages included their native language, a language they spoke fluently, one they spoke a little, one where they only knew a handful of words, and four languages that they didn’t speak at all.

By studying the brains of these multilingual people, the researchers were able to observe that there is different activity in the brain depending on whether the language the person has heard was their native language or one they’d learned later, as explained in a statement:

“In the brains of these polyglots — people who speak five or more languages — the same language regions light up when they listen to any of the languages that they speak. In general, this network responds more strongly to languages in which the speaker is more proficient, with one notable exception: the speaker’s native language. When listening to one’s native language, language network activity drops off significantly.”

These findings show that even when you reach a level of proficiency in a language, the brain still has to work much harder than when you are listening to, or speaking, your native language, as MIT’s Evelina Fedorenko – lead author of the study – explains:

“Something makes it a little bit easier to process — maybe it’s that you’ve spent more time using that language — and you get a dip in activity for the native language compared to other languages that you speak proficiently.

As you increase proficiency, you can engage linguistic computations to a greater extent, so you get these progressively stronger responses. But then if you compare a really high-proficiency language and a native language, it may be that the native language is just a little bit easier, possibly because you’ve had more experience with it.”

The truth is, learning another language – especially when you are getting older – can feel pretty difficult at times.

And that is, in part at least, because your brain has to work so much harder in order to do it.

And here is the evidence that, even if you are fluent in another language, your brain will still have an innate preference for the language you grew up with.

Kudos to all you polyglots out there!

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