History Main / Omniglot

* Barney Stinson in {{How I Met Your Mother}} seems to randomly know a number of languages including Korean, Mandarin, Latin, Hungarian, French, and possibly others.

* An episode of ''AllGrownUp'' shows Susie Carmichael knowing various words in various languages as part of a linguistic contest. She claims that she has a "freaky knack" for this. Problem is, such an ability is attested only once outside of the episode in question. [[hottip:*:In ''Rugrats in Paris'', Angelica boasts that she's going to Paris and brags about learning the language. Susie responds in perfect French, "I feel sorry for the French people who will hear you."]]

* In real life, some people do indeed claim to speak dozens of languages, but there are a lot of problems you run into when you try to make a list of them. For one thing, a lot of the claims are just plain unproven — more often than not, there's either there's no evidence at all, or no evidence beyond the memorised-a-phrasebook level. (And that's not counting the ones who For another thing, there's no set standard for how much you have to know to be counted as a speaker, or even for what you're allowed to count as a language. TheOtherWiki actually stopped trying to list these people because of the difficulty of verifying or comparing anything, and since real life isn't even our focus here, perhaps we should follow that example and not bother.

* In real life, some people do indeed claim to speak dozens of languages, but there are a lot of problems you run into when you try to make a list of them. For one thing, a lot of the claims are just plain unproven — more often than not, there's either there's no evidence at all, or no evidence beyond the memorised-a-phrasebook level. (And that's not counting the ones who For another thing, there's no set standard for how much you have to know to be counted as a speaker, or even for what you're allowed to count as a language. TheOtherWiki actually stopped trying to list these people because of the difficulty of verifying or comparing anything, and since real life isn't even our focus here, perhaps we should follow that example and not bother.

* In real life, some people do indeed claim to speak dozens of languages, although there are questions as to how much someone needs to know to be classified as a speaker, and also questions about what counts as a separate language. (Not to mention questions about whether the claims can actually be verified - some may have been, but certainly not all.) Some reasonably well-known historical figures who are said to have spoken many languages include Mithradates VI of Pontus (who is said to have spoken all the languages of the lands he ruled over - somewhere between 25 and 30) and Queen Christina of Sweden.
* Daniel Tammet, a British high-functioning autistic savant, can speak eleven languages, and can learn a new one in a week. To prove this, he was challenged to learn Icelandic in one week. A week passes and he appears on Icelandic TV, conversing in Icelandic, and responding to questions in that language. He's also the guy who has recited pi from memory to 22,514 digits in under six hours.
* Latvian poet [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuts_Skujenieks Knut Skujenieks]] speaks dozens of languages. He can reputedly learn a new one by studying quietly to himself for a couple of months (to pick up vocabulary and grammar) and then go mingle with native speakers for a week or so (to pick up the pronunciation).
* Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) spoke 29 languages according to some sources, he almost certainly spoke at least a dozen. He spoke Arabic well enough to pass for an Arab pilgrim in order to be the first westerner to see mecca. He also wrote the first English translations of 1001 Nights and the Kama Sutra.
* The late Pope John Paul II. He spoke Polish, Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Croatian, Ancient Greek, Latin, Tagalog and Papuan, among others.
** Or any other Pope. The job kind of requires it.
** When addressing a congregation who speak a language that differs from the Pope's native tongue and that he does not speak fluently, it is common for his texts of blessings to be [[FauxFluency re-written for him phonetically in the new language]].
* According to Plutarch, Cleopatra spoke several languages, including Hebrew, Arabic, and Ethiopian. This on top of being the only Ptolemy ruler to bother learning Egyptian; her native language was Greek.
* Andrew Eldritch, of TheSistersOfMercy, knows half a dozen languages, give or take (he was a student of languages at Oxford). Interviewers would often remark on this more than his music, which led him to observe that facility in more than one language is seen as an extraordinary gift in the English-speaking world, but "in Europe you can speak three or four languages and still be a mechanic, or postman, or what have you." Interestingly he doesn't apply his language talents to his music, except for the song "Marian" from the Sisters' first album, which had a verse in German.
* William James Sidis spoke ten languages at the age of eight: his native English, Latin, Greek, French, Russian, German, Hebrew, Turkish, Armenian and one he invented. In his adult life, he spoke about forty.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Mezzofanti Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti]] was an Italian cardinal who learned 38 different languages without ever leaving Italy.
* ChristopherLee is fluent in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German [[http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Wizards-Dream-Rhapsody/dp/B0007W22IO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1283197489&sr=1-1 (and sings in them, too)]], proficient in Swedish, Russian and Greek, and at least conversational in Mandarin Chinese if {{Ian McKellen}} is to be believed. And, as fans of TheLordOfTheRings might suspect, he's fairly knowledgeable in Tolkienic languages as well.
* Viggo Mortensen knows English, Spanish, Danish, and French, and speaks Swedish and Norwegian reasonably well. He also knows [[TheLordOfTheRings Quenya]], but stated that it is useless when not speaking with Tolkienmaniacs.
* German adventurer and archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was at least functional in about 13 languages aside from his native German: English, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Italian, Modern Greek, Ancient Greek, Latin, Russian, Arabic, and Turkish. His technique was to study grammars of each language, then begin composing short stories and writing diary entries and letters in the language. He learned most of these languages within six weeks, with French and English each taking about six months and Ancient Greek about 3 months.
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Krebs Emil Krebs]] mastered 68 languages speaking and writing, and studied nearly twice as many to some degree.
* Vladimir Nabokov was known to speak fluently Russian, English and French. He wrote in this three languages, and translated his own books in them. But he also knew German, Italian and latin.
* EddieIzzard is fluent in English (of course) and French. This is more notable in that he actually performs comedy acts in French to French audiences, meaning he's not just fluent, but also understands the nuances and cultural traits of the language as well.
** He also speaks some [[GermanLanguage German]], enough to do some rudimentary comedy and make ample use of GratuitousGerman in his otherwise-English acts: "Einen minuten bitte, ich habe einen kleinen problemo avec diese religione." (Martin Luther was from everywhere, you see).
* JRRTolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon, gave lectures on Middle English, Gothic, Old Icelandic and Medieval Welsh, and had at least a working knowledge of up to forty languages. And this is excluding all of the [[ConLang various languages]] of [[TheLordOfTheRings Middle-Earth]] that he constructed.
* Noah Webster learned 23 languages to work on his dictionaries.
* Jeremiah Curtin learned over sixty and is known for collecting folklore in the original language from American Indians, Irish, and many Slavonic countries.

Sometimes there may be justification for this--perhaps it's a superpower, or perhaps they had an UpgradeArtifact. And sure, some people genuinely are good at languages. (Noah Webster learned 23 languages to work on his dictionaries; Jeremiah Curtin learned over sixty and is known for collecting folklore in the original language from American Indians, Irish, and many Slavonic countries.) But sometimes, it just seems to be a case of DidNotDoTheResearch -- the author is just not aware that learning a foreign language properly can be quite difficult and time-consuming (perhaps because the author has never properly learned a second language himself). The result is a sort of CharlesAtlasSuperpower.

* The GreenLantern Corp's {{green lantern ring}}s let them speak any language, which is useful, considering that they are something akin to a galactic police force.
* Shatterstar, then a member of X-Force, possesses enhanced learning capabilities and mastered Spanish by watching television. He's since been shown to be fluent in at least one other language (German), and probably speaks several others.

* Ibn Fadlan, title character of ''The13thWarrior'', picked up the language of a party of Vikings merely by '''listening''' to them over the course of a month or so. He didn't '''converse''' in all that time -- when he finally began speaking their language fluently, they were stunned.

* Similarly, in "The ForbiddenKingdom", a 20th-Century kid from L.A. (who happens to be a fan of classic chop-socky movies) lands... literally... in Mythic China. When he first awakens, he can't understand anyone, which proves disconcerting when a group of unpleasant soldiers start yelling orders at him. Jackie Chan's character arrives, defeats the soldiers with Drunken Boxing and tries to talk to our hero.

* Most of Vladimir Nabokov characters fit this tropes. Humbert Humbert the main character of Lolita speaks English, French, Italian and German fluently. And Van Veen from 'Ada or Ardor' speaks even more languages, including Russian.

* Stephen Maturin of the ''Aubrey-Maturin'' series can speak English, French, Spanish, Catalan and Latin fluently. He can speak Ancient Greek and Portuguese well, though of the latter he says in one of the later books that he has trouble with pronunciation. Over the course of the books he learns Urdu, Arabic and Malay, as well as picking up some Polynesian, Turkish and Berber. His cradle tongue was Irish, but by 15 he had forgotten it; by the second book he can subconsciously understand the Irish-speaking mutineers, and by the fourth he is writing political propaganda. In the rest of the books, he is fluent again.

* ''DoogieHowser, MD'' once picked up the basics of the Hmong language in a single half-hour episode, while treating a Hmong patient and conversing with the patient's relatives.
* Sam Beckett from ''QuantumLeap'' speaks seven modern languages and four dead ones (Including Egyptian hieroglyphs). Interestingly enough, the languages he didn't speak (Such as Italian or Hebrew) tended to be plot points more than the ones he did.

Sometimes there may be justification for this--perhaps it's a superpower, or perhaps they had an UpgradeArtifact. And sure, some people genuinely are good at languages. But sometimes, it just seems to be a case of DidNotDoTheResearch -- the author is just not aware that learning a foreign language properly can be quite difficult and time-consuming (perhaps because the author has never properly learned a second language himself). The result is a sort of CharlesAtlasSuperpower.

Sometimes, characters are casually given skills with languages which would be very remarkable in real life, if not downright unrealistic. Most people find it hard work to achieve native-level fluency in just one foreign language, even when they're a full time student of it, but a fictional character might speak thirty languages well enough to be mistaken for a native speaker in each. Or the character might somehow learn the local language fluently just by chatting while playing cards each evening for a few weeks. Or perhaps, due to having taken evening classes for a month when they were twenty years younger, they are able to win debates on metaphysics in a particular language.

->''"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse."''

-->''"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse."''

-->'''Bender''': You speak English?
-->'''God''': I do now.
-->-- ''{{Futurama}}''

----

* ChristopherLee is fluent in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, proficient in Swedish, Russian and Greek, and at least conversational in Mandarin Chinese if {{Ian McKellen}} is to be believed. And, as fans of TheLordOfTheRings might suspect, he's fairly knowledgeable in Tolkienic languages as well.

* How has the late Pope John Paul II not been mentioned yet? He spoke Polish, Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Croatian, Ancient Greek, Latin, Tagalog and Papuan, among others.
** Or any other Pope. The job kind of requires it.

* Andrew Eldritch, of TheSistersOfMercy, knows half a dozen languages, give or take (he was a student of languages at Oxford). Interviewers would often remark on this more than his music, which led him to observe that facility in more than one language is seen as an extraordinary gift in the English-speaking world, but "in Europe you can speak three or four languages and still be a mechanic, or postman, or what have you." Interestingly he doesn't apply his language talents to his music, except for the song "Marian" from the Sisters' first album, which had a verse in German.

->I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.

->'''Bender''': You speak English?
->'''God''': I do now.

* [[AliensAmongUs Zoe]] from ''GirlsInSpace'' speaks ''every'' Earth language. She doesn't bring this up because [[IThoughtEveryoneCouldDoThat she thought everyone could do that.]]

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Krebs]] mastered 68 languages speaking and writing, and studied nearly twice as many to some degree.

* in the TV show of {{The A-Team}} Murdock can apparently speak several languages including Spanish, German, Vietnamese, Japanese, Russian and Mandarin Chinese.

* Ibn Fadlan, title character of ''The13thWarrior'' (based on MichaelCrichton's book), picked up the language of a party of Vikings merely by '''listening''' to them over the course of a month or so. He didn't '''converse''' in all that time -- when he finally began speaking their language (fluently), they were stunned.