I once new a man that was fluent in a number of languages. However, if you asked him how many languages he knew, he would launch into a lecture about the difference between a language and dialect. The point of the lecture was that there is a very fuzzy line between a language and a dialect. The line is so fuzzy that you really can't say how many languages a person knows.

Berlitz once claimed 85, although how much he could actually say in each language is a different matter. I speak several languages but there are such big differences in what I can do and say from language to language that when someone asks how many I speak I don't like to answer. In three of them I can touch type, for Pete's sake, but I can't speak the language I'm writing a textbook in.

I know a woman who claims to be fluent in 7 languages, but one of them, (Japanese) I can also speak, and she doesn't seem fluent to me, so I wonder about her so called "fluency" in all the others as well.

Maybe not the highest number of languages that one person was fluent in, but the late Pope John Paul II was recognized for speaking as many as 24 languages.

The word "fluent" just means flowing. If you can hold a conversation in a language, technically you are fluent. But there are different levels of fluent, from survival, to competent, to advanced, to native speaker. Then there are also written skills to consider. When you hear of people such as Pope John Paul II being fluent in 22 languages, it would be interesting to know how well he operated in ALL these languages. I am not doubting that he was prodigious. I heard him speak English, and he was great. I heard him in Italian and German-likewise. I know his first language was Polish, and I am certain his Russian was fluent by any standard. French and Latin would also be languages he used often and I am sure he was extremely good at them too, so that makes 7. He was a special case though. I am certain he had various degrees of fluency in other European languages as well, as he was using them in diplomacy constantly. There would be few people as competent as him in so many languages. but even he would have had languages he was stronger in and weaker in, languages where he was fluent enough to hold a conversation, but not to discuss deep things in perhaps. I speak 4 languages fluently: English, Indonesian, Italian and German. German would be my weakest because I used it least. However, I am well above competent. My Indonesian and Italian are advanced. AFter that, I can hold conversations in French, as long as they are mostly to do with everyday necessities. Although, I did hold one recently with a couple, explaining the Palm Sunday outdoor celebration we were having. It was a little pidgin in places, but the gist was got! LOL ACtually, I can read it better than I speak it, due to being able to recognise so many words from English and Italian. My Spanish is also so-so. I tend to throw in Italian words if I can't think of the Spanish one and hope for the best. But I CAN have a conversation. In Dutch and Portuguese, I would never claim fluency, although I can generally read a document with the aid of a dictionary. So, in summary, although there are people like Pope John Paul II who are prodigies in languages, they are rare. Four or five language fluency is not unusual eg Many Swiss would speak German, French and Italian. If they spoke the fourth national language of Switzerland, Raeto-Romansch, they would be quadrilingual without ever having to cross a border. Many Indonesians speak their home language, the national language, the language of the area they live in, and have competencies in other nearby languages.Some shop assistants in Bali, whom I know can switch into English, German, Italian and French, just from having mixed with tourists. Their spoken skills are limited but their understanding not bad at all.

In Vancouver, Canada in the early 1990's, there was an official law courts translator who had a command of 40+ languages. I met him at his language school and listened to him explain a logical and simple method for acquiring the tools of communication in other languages. Unfortunately, I've forgotten his name (Janis seems to remain in my gray matter but I don't know if that was part of his first or last name...) but certainly would like to know it. I think his school was called the "Geneva Language Institute" or the "Geneva Language School" and was located near the Bayshore Inn near Stanley Park. He was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records in the early 1990's as the world recond holder but the latest editions do not even list the topic any more. If anyone can help me get in touch with him, I'd be very grateful! warm regards, Dale