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A polyglot is someone with a high degree of proficiency in several languages. A bilingual person can speak two languages fluently, a trilingual three, above that the term multilingual may be used. The word hyperpolyglot for a person who can speak six or more languages fluently is rarely used.

There is no clear definition of what it means to "speak a language". A tourist who can handle a simple conversation with a waiter may be completely lost when it comes to discussing current affairs or even using multiple tenses. A diplomat or businessman who can handle complicated negotiations in a foreign language may not be able to write a simple letter correctly. A four-year-old French child usually must be said to "speak French fluently", but it is possible that he cannot handle the subjunctive as well as even some mediocre foreign students of the language do.

In addition there is no clear definition of what "one language" means. The Scandinavian languages are so similar that a large part of the native speakers understand all of them without much trouble. This means that a speaker of Danish, Norwegian or Swedish can easily get his count up to 3 languages. On the other hand, the differences between variants of Chinese, like Cantonese and Mandarin, are so big that hard studies are needed for a speaker of one of them to learn even to understand a different one correctly. A person who has learned to speak five Chinese "dialects" perfectly has achieved something impressive, but his "count" would still be only one "language". Another example could be that a person who learnt five different languages like French, Spanish, Romanian, Italian and Portuguese, all belonging to the closely related Romance languages, has accomplished something much less astonishing than a person who learnt Hebrew, Standard Mandarin, Finnish, Navajo and Hawaiian, of which none is remotely related to another.

Furthermore, what is considered a language can change, often for purely political purposes, such as when Serbo-Croatian was split into Serbian and Croatian after Yugoslavia broke up, or when Ukrainian was dismissed as a Russian dialect by the Russian Czars to discourage national feelings.

A widely-cited statement concerning this issue, published by Max Weinreich, quoting a remark by an auditor of one of his lectures: "A language is a dialect with an army and navy."

A hyperpolyglot is one who can speak six or more languages fluently. The term was coined by the linguist Richard Hudson in 2003 and derives from the word "polyglot", meaning one who can speak multiple languages. It is rarely used.

There are several theories as to why some people learn many languages with relative ease, while others struggle learning even one foreign language.

The neuroscientist Katrin Amunts studied the brain of Emil Krebs and determined that the area of Krebs' brain responsible for language—Broca's area—was organized differently than in monolingual men. On the other hand, the neurolinguist Loraine Obler has suggested a link with the Geschwind-Galaburda cluster, which shows a high coincidence of left-handedness, homosexuality, auto-immune disorders, learning disorders and talents in art, mathematics and, possibly, languages.^[1]

• Uku Masing (1909–1985), an Estonian linguist, theologian, ethnologist, and poet. Claim: fluent in approximately 65 languages, translated from 20. ^[2]
• Harold Williams (1876–1928), New Zealand journalist and linguist. Claim: over 58 languages. ^[3]
• Ziad Fazah (1954– ), raised in Lebanon, living in Brazil since the 1970s. Claim: speaks, reads and understands 58 languages.^[4]

• "The Gift of the Gab", New Scientist, 2481, 40-43.

• Data on multilingualism in India
• Discussion forum about polyglots
• Non-profit Polyglot Community
• Multilingualism and Word Memorizing
• Stuart Jay Raj - Polyglot Language Blog