Last Updated: 05/24/2022
The Most Inspiring and Famous Polyglots in the World
Here, you’ll find out who those famous polyglots are, how many languages they speak, how they learn languages, and links to their websites and YouTube channels where you can find their advice for learning languages and more!
We’ll start with the famous polyglots, then introduce some hyperpolyglots, and we’ll finish off the list with a bonus polyglot (any guesses?) and some famous historical polyglots and multilingual celebrities.
Terms to Know
What is a polyglot?
Polyglots are essentially people who speak many languages. The word polyglot comes from the Greek word poluglōttos, which means more than one tongue. (“Tongue” referring to language, in this case.) Most languages don’t stray too far from this root: poliglots, poliglotta, poliglota, polyglottes… Technically speaking, anyone who speaks more than one language is a polyglot. But most bilingual or even multilingual people don’t consider themselves polyglots. That’s why it can be difficult to define “polyglot.” Exactly how many languages do you need to know to be a polyglot? Most people think that to truly be part of the “polyglot club,” you should be able to speak at least three languages. This is the definition we’ll be relying on for this article about the most inspiring and famous polyglots. We created a separate section for hyperpolyglots.
What’s the difference between a polyglot and a hyperpolyglot?
Speaking of hyperpolyglots… what are they?! Hyperpolyglots and polyglots are both terms that refer to people who can speak more than one language. Although some people think that the two terms mean the same thing, there is a difference.
A hyperpolyglot is proficient in at least 12 (!) languages.
As a reminder, for this article, we’ll consider a polyglot to be fluent in more than three languages. Now that we have that terminology out of the way, let’s get into our list of awesome and inspiring polyglots and language lovers!
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Our List of Inspiring and Famous Polyglots
Olly Richards
Our co-founder Luca had the chance to interview him recently and picked up a lot of useful tips about how to immerse yourself in a language without moving abroad (check out the video below).
Country: United Kingdom
Languages: English (native), Japanese, Cantonese, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian and Arabic
YouTube Channel: Olly Richards
Blog: iwillteachyoualanguage.com
Products: Language Learning Foundations Video Course – Intermediate Spanish Academy
How he learns language: listening to audio material, talking, using flashcards and SRS
Olly was kind enough to share some great language immersion tips (not just for famous polyglots) in this video on our YouTube channel:
Benny Lewis
Benny runs Fluent in 3 Months, one of the most popular language-learning blogs in the world. The project started with his challenge to live in different countries and become conversational in the local language in just three months. We are big fans of his language-hacking-based approach. Benny loves finding shortcuts to getting by in a language in a very short amount of time. He also encourages people to accept and embrace their mistakes, which are part of the learning process. Benny shares our passion for flashcards and the SRS method, so it’s no surprise that we like his work.
Below is an interview we recorded with Benny in Berlin. He also wrote a nice review of MosaLingua apps on his blog, Fluent in 3 Months.
Country: Ireland
Languages: English (native), Spanish, Esperanto, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, Dutch and Irish
YouTube Channel: Benny Lewis
Blog: fluentin3months.com
Product: FI3M Premium – Why (language name) is Easy – Language Hacking Series (French, Spanish, German, and Italian)
How he learns language: talking, hacking the language, flashcards, SRS
Check out MosaLingua co-founder Samuel’s conversation with Benny Lewis:
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Lydia Machova
Lydia organized two Polyglot Gatherings in Bratislava, which happened to be among the biggest polyglot events in the world.
Languages: Slovak, Czech, English, German, Spanish, French, Polish, Esperanto, Russian, Swahili
YouTube Channel: Language Mentoring
Products: Language Master video course
How she learns language: starts with a book, lots of input, Goldlist method, various combinations of methods
Watch Luca’s 2017 interview with Lydia right here or on our YouTube channel:
Jimmy Mello
Unlike your typical Brazilian person who loves soccer, Jimmy’s passion (and hobby) is learning languages. Despite his extensive knowledge of language, he has surprisingly never lived abroad. He attributes his language-learning capacity to motivation, dedication, and commitment. Jimmy has incredible energy and his real gift is being able to share his enthusiasm and passion for languages. He is the author of the Mello Method, which is entirely based on speaking the language you want to learn. Jimmy is also a fan of flashcards and apps.
Country: Brazil
Languages: Portuguese (native), English, Spanish, Italian, French, Catalan, Polish, Russian, and Esperanto
Blog: brazilianpolyglot.com
YouTube Channel: My Polyglot TV
Products: The Mello Method
How he learns languages: speaking them from an early stage, using flashcards and apps
Aaron Myers
Country: USA
Languages: English (native), Turkish, Spanish
Blog: aarongmyers.weebly.com
Donovan Nagel
Donovan hails from Australia and is a big believer that you don’t need to know grammar to learn a language. He argues that the best way to learn a language is to copy the way we learned a language as a kid. Even before their first grammar lesson, children learn by listening to and imitating their parents. His theory is that as children, we learn sentences in fragments instead of individual words. For example, “look at that!” instead of “look,” “at,” and “that” as individual words.
Country: Australia
Languages: English (native), Egyptian Arabic, MSA, Korean, Russian, Irish, Ancient Hebrew, and Greek
YouTube Channel: Mezzoguild
Blog: mezzoguild.com
Judith Meyer
Country: Germany
Languages: German (native), English, French, Italian, Esperanto, Chinese, Swahili, Greek, Spanish, Indonesian and Dutch
Website: learnlangs.com
YouTube Channel: German Polyglot Judith Meyer
Conor Clyne
Country: Ireland
Languages: English (native), French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Romanian, Irish, and Catalan
Blog: tsarexperience.com
YouTube Channel: Language Tsar with Conor Clyne
Simon Ager
He has lived in 6 different countries so far: England, Wales, France, Jersey, Taiwan, and Japan. Despite truly deserving his spot in this article on the most famous polyglots, he isn’t just interested in languages. He also loves music; he sings, plays various instruments, and writes his own songs.
Country: Great Britain
Languages: English (native), Mandarin Chinese, French, Welsh, Irish, German, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Japanese, Spanish, and Esperanto
Blog: omniglot.com
Kerstin Cable
Kerstin believes that language learning is not just for those who are smart, rich, young and/or privileged, and she thinks it should be something that people enjoy doing. Additionally, she informs her readers that when you find the right resources and tools for you, language learning can even become easy.
Country: Germany
Languages: German (native), French, Spanish, Latin, Russian, Italian, Welsh
Blog: fluentlanguage.co.uk
Sam Gendreau
Country: USA
Languages: French (native), English, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese
Blog: lingholic.com
Olle Linge
Country: Sweden
Languages: Swedish (native), Mandarin Chinese, English, French, and German
Blog: hackingchinese.com
Maha Yakoub
Country: Palestine
Languages: Arabic (native), Italian, Hebrew, German, English
Blog: learnarabicwithmaha.wordpress.com
YouTube Channel: Learn Arabic with Maha
Brian Kwong
Country: Hong Kong
Languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, English, German, Romanian and Japanese
Products: add1challenge.com
Kris Broholm
Learning languages while traveling is something he always wanted to do. It gave him a purpose and a reason to live. He now does exactly this, and his goal is to learn ten languages in ten years! On his website, he gives tips and talks about his language-learning journey to help others learn languages.
Kris Broholm doesn’t claim that you’ll become fluent in your target language overnight, or even over the course of a year. However, he does provide a massive range of resources to help inspire your language-learning journey. He also produces a podcast about resources, articles, and inspirational people.
Country: Denmark
Languages: Danish (native), English, German, Esperanto, Russian, and Hungarian
Blog: actualfluency.com
Susanna Zaraysky
Country: Russia
Languages: Russian (native), English (native), French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian
Blog: createyourworldbook.com
Lindsay Williams
Country: Great Britain
Languages: English (native) Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch
Blog: lindsaydoeslanguages.com
Gabriel Wyner
Country: USA
Languages: English (native), German, French, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, Japanese
Blog: fluent-forever.com
Gabriel Gelman
Gabriel was raised bilingual (German and Russian) but did not stop there, because he later decided to learn French and Spanish. During a talk at the polyglot gathering, he admitted that he is a lazy polyglot who is always looking for the best methods to learn a language without spending too much time and effort. Needless to say, we like this approach – get 80% of the results with only the 20% of the effort.
Country: Germany
Languages: German (native), Russian, French, Spanish, English, and Hebrew
Blog: sprachheld.de
YouTube Channel: Sprachheld
Luca interviewed Gabriel at the Polyglot Gathering 2017 in Bratislava. Their video is in French, but you can turn on English subtitles if needed.
You’ll find more videos like this one on our YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe while you’re there!
Jan Van Der Aa
He has also made languages part of his professional life because Jan is the co-founder of Language Boost, a company that creates courses to learn languages (the other co-founder is Lucas Bighetti, another impressive polyglot from Brazil). Born and raised in Holland, Jan is also a passionate traveler who managed to visit 100 countries by his twenties.
Country: The Netherlands
Languages: Dutch (native), Mandarin, French, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Spanish, Cantonese, and some Russian and Thai
Blog: languageboost.biz
YouTube Channel: Jan & Lucas – LanguageBoost
Emily Liedel
Country: USA
Languages: English (native), French, Russian, German, Chinese, Spanish
Blog: thebabeltimes.com
Noel van Vliet
Country: USA
Languages: Spanish, French, German, English, Italian and Japanese
Blog: smartlanguagelearner.com
Ellen Jovin
Country: USA
Languages: English, French, and Spanish
Blog: ellenjovin.com
Stephen Krashen
Country: USA
Languages: English, Hebrew, German, French, and Spanish
Blog: skrashen.blogspot.com/
Inspiring and Famous Hyperpolyglots
As promised, these are some inspiring and famous hyperpolyglots who speak 12 or more languages!
Richard Simcott
Country: United Kingdom
Languages: English (native), French, Spanish, Welsh, German, Macedonian, Swedish, Italian, Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian, Portuguese, Czech, Catalan, Russian, Dutch, Romanian, and Albanian
YouTube Channel: Richard Simcott
Blog: speakingfluently.com
Steve Kaufmann
Country: Canada
Languages: English (native), Ukrainian, Korean, Romanian, Swedish, Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Czech, Russian, Italian, and Japanese
YouTube channel: Steve Kaufmann – lingosteve
Blog: thelinguist.com
Product: Linq
Luca Lampariello
Besides being an amazing language learner, we love the fact that Luca Lampariello has a gift for sharing his passion for language—something we can obviously relate to!
Country: Italy
Languages: Italian (native), English, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, and Hungarian.
YouTube Channel: Luca Lampariello
Blog: lucalampariello.com
How he learns language: translating, comparing bidirectional texts, speaking
Elisa Polese
Originally from Naples, Elisa has lived in many countries (UK, Russia, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and Switzerland) where she has taught foreign languages to hundreds of students. She is also a well-known speaker at international conferences. In addition to dealing with language learning, she also focuses on multilingual teaching and intercultural communication. She always makes sure she spreads her contagious love for languages. We must say that here at MosaLingua we absolutely love her approach to language learning and teaching, and we are really happy to have her as the only female hyperpolyglot in our ranks!
She recently spoke to Luca (MosaLingua co-founder and a fellow Neapolitan) about how she has managed to learn so many languages. Check out the extended interview right here or on our YouTube channel:
Country: Italy
Languages: Italian (native), English, German, Spanish, Russian, French, Dutch, Catalan, Portuguese, Greek, Hindi, Arabic, Esperanto, Hungarian, Sinhalese, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Serbian, Ukrainian, Hebrew, Turkish, and Polish.
Blog: speakfromdayonewithelisa.com
YouTube Channel: PassionForLanguages
Alex Rawlings
Country: United Kingdom
Languages: English (native), French, German, Spanish, Greek, Dutch, Afrikaans, Italian, Catalan, Hebrew, German, Russian, Yiddish, Hungarian and Serbian
Blog: alexrawlings.co.uk
Vladimir Skultety
Country: Slovakia
Languages: Slovak (native), English, Hungarian, Czech, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Serbian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Dutch, Japanese, and Cantonese
Blog: foreverastudent.com
YouTube Channel: Vladimir Skultety
Products: Understanding Chinese Characters
Timothy Doner
Country: USA
Languages: English (native), French, Hausa, Wolof, Russian, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic, Pashto, Persian, Mandarin, Italian, Turkish, Indonesian, Dutch, Xhosa, Kiswahili, Hindi, Ojibwe, Kinyarwanda, and Creole
YouTube Channel: Polyglot Pal
Emanuele Marini
Country: Italy
Languages: Italian (native), Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Finnish, French, Greek, English, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Dutch, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, German, Turkish, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Latin, classical Greek, and Hebrew
Cesco Reale
Country: Italy
Languages: Italian (native), Esperanto, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, German, Catalan, Romanian, Greek, Latin, Galician, Chinese, Russian, Sardinian, and Dutch.
YouTube Channel: Cesco Reale
Bonus Famous Polyglots
MosaLingua Co-Founder Luca Sadurny
Luca’s mission is to inspire others to learn languages and to show them that anyone can succeed. In other words, he believes that if even a non-naturally talented language learner like himself can learn several languages, his example should inspire and encourage others.
He’s also one of the creators of the numerous MosaLingua language learning products and training programs for mobile and computer. They can help anyone who wants to have the pleasure of speaking one or more foreign languages.
Country: Italy
Languages: Italian (native), Neapolitan (native), English, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese, and German
YouTube Channel: MosaLingua
Blog: www.mosalingua.com
Product: The MosaLingua apps and MosaLingua Premium (Web & Mobile)
How he learns languages: flashcards and SRS for vocab, language exchange for speaking and using fun material for improving his listening skills
Multilingual Celebrities & Famous Polyglots Throughout History
Lastly, we want to mention a few famous polyglots and language lovers who didn’t make language their career, but who are notable nonetheless. These multilingual historical figures and celebrities include:
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Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
who could read at least English, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. His library also had books about the Welsh, Arabic, and Gaelic languages, but historians can’t confirm whether or not his interest went much further.
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Another famous Thomas, Thomas Young (1773-1829)
was a polymath in addition to being a hyper-polyglot. As a teen, one of his interests was translating biblical passages into 13 languages, including a few you may not have even heard of, like Chaldean, Samaritan, and Syriac! He even deciphered some of the Rosetta Stone, though he isn’t often credited for his work.
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J.R.R. Tolkein (1892–1973)
an author and prolific language inventor, most famous for developing the many constructed languages in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings franchises. He also reportedly knew an incredible 35 natural languages, including Finnish and Lithuanian.
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Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993)
traveled the world quite a bit, both for her acting career and for the humanitarian work with UNICEF that she was passionate about. Along the way, she picked up six languages. Listen to her speak them here.
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Natalie Portman (1981-)
isn’t just an Academy Award-winning actress. She also fits our definition of polyglot! She is fluent in English and Hebrew and knows some Japanese, German, French, and Spanish. (Apparently she needs to brush up on her American Sign Language, though. 😳)
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Trevor Noah (1984-)
makes a living talking and being funny, but mostly in English. Not many people know that he speaks 7 of the 11 official languages of South Africa (Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Tsonga, Tswana, Southern Sotho, and Xhosa—one of the languages on our list of the coolest languages), where he grew up, plus German.
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Inspired? Here’s how to be a polyglot
I hope you enjoyed this article on the most inspiring and famous polyglots in the world, and that it will motivate you to learn one or more languages for yourself. Now, to get started, learn from the best! Check out all of these famous polyglots and their websites, read what they have to say about learning languages, and watch their YouTube videos. You can also check out Polyglot Station, a new project to bring together polyglots from all over the world. (You might even see a familiar face at the top of the Connect page!) In short, go learn a language! 🙂