3.5 KiB
| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| List of polyglots | 6/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_polyglots | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T08:12:10.749388+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== North America === Powell Janulus (1939–), Canadian court interpreter. According to the 1986 Guinness Book of World Records, he "has worked with 41 languages in the Provincial Court of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada." Stephen Krashen (1941–), American linguist. He knows English, German, Yiddish, Spanish, French, Hebrew, and Amharic. Steve Kaufmann (1945–), Canadian businessman. He has some understanding of twenty languages, although his ability to speak and write these languages varies to a considerable degree. Some of the languages he has studied are French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swedish, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, and Cantonese. Pope Leo XIV (1955–), leader of the Catholic Church. He speaks English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French, and can read Latin and German. Viggo Mortensen (1958–), Danish-American actor. He grew up bilingual in English and Spanish, and later learnt Danish, Italian, and French. He also has some knowledge of Arabic. Julie Payette (1963–), former governor general of Canada. She speaks French and English natively, and can converse in Spanish, Italian, Russian, and German. Alexander Argüelles (1964–), American linguist. He speaks most of the Germanic and Romance languages (in particular, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian), as well as Russian, Korean, and Arabic, and he has a reading knowledge of many more languages, such as Persian and Old Norse. Alberto Lati (1978–), Mexican sports journalist. He speaks Spanish, English, Hebrew, Portuguese, German, Italian, Mandarin, Japanese, French, Greek, and Zulu with varying degrees of fluency. Pete Buttigieg (1982–), American politician. He speaks English, Norwegian, Spanish, French, Italian, Maltese, Arabic, and Dari with varying degrees of fluency. Timothy Doner (1995–), American foreign-policy analyst. He speaks English, German, French, Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew, and has some knowledge of a number of other languages, including Dutch, Yiddish, Italian, Latin, Russian, Croatian, Hindi, Pashto, Kurdish, Turkish, Indonesian, Mandarin, Hausa, Swahili, Xhosa, and Ojibwe.
=== Oceania === Sam Lim (1961–), Malaysian-born Australian politician. He can speak ten languages, including Malay, Indonesian, Mandarin, and Burmese. Ghil'ad Zuckermann (1971–), Israeli linguist, now living in Australia. He can speak eleven languages, and has some knowledge of eleven more.
=== South America === Martha Argerich (1941–), Argentine pianist. She speaks Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and English. Ziad Fazah (1954–), Liberian-born Lebanese language teacher, now living in Brazil. He is famous for claiming to speak more than fifty languages, and for a time was listed in The Guinness Book of Records. It is unclear how many languages he can in fact speak. Andrew Divoff (1955–), Venezuelan actor and producer. He speaks Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, French, Italian, English, German, and Russian. At one time he also knew Romanian, but forgot it through lack of use. Sérgio Meira (1968–), Brazilian linguist. He speaks Portuguese, French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian, English, German, and Esperanto, and to a lesser extent Catalan, Dutch, Russian, and Tiriyó. He can read with a dictionary Swedish, Latin, and Greek (both classical and modern), and has considerable knowledge of Volapük.
== References ==