# What's the most languages a single person has been able to speak fluently? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 19, 2009, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010 "2009-01-19T17:10:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2009, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/41 "2009-01-21T21:41:32Z")
> [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](#): > > I’m sure by the time the phrase “I want to buy a horse” got to Sacagawea it must’ve been something like “Does your wife hav sex with horses?” and the S-gal had to figure out what the heck Lewis was asking Which she must have realized means “we would like to have sex with your wife.” Since this is an infrequently invoked hospitality custom in the Shoshone culture, the chieftain obliged but with reservations. Lewis and Clark were pleasantly relieved from their long journey, but they still needed those damn horses. Unfortunately, their bargaining power was somewhat deminished the next day. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2009, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/42 "2009-01-21T22:40:40Z")
> [@](#): > > If you are testing some hypothetical uber-polyglot and they can neither spell, pronounce or construct according to the ‘rules’ and have a tiny vocabulary but can be mistaken for a native by other natives 99% of the time, do you then count them as being ‘fluent’ in that langauge? And are they more or less fluent than another potential candidate, who can follow all the rules of the language flawlessly and ace every academic langauge exam but still very obviously sounds like a foreigner? The rules of a language are the things which a speaker of the language follows. If you can be mistaken for a native speaker 99% of the time, then you’re following the rules, and if folks can tell from your language that you’re not a native speaker, then you’re not following the rules. This is completely independent of what those stodgy old grammar textbooks tell you. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/43 "2009-01-22T01:03:39Z")
> [@Alex\_Dubinsky](#): > > Which she must have realized means “we would like to have sex with your wife.” Since this is an infrequently invoked hospitality custom in the Shoshone culture, the chieftain obliged but with reservations. I didn’t think the Shoshone were on a reservation yet. ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/44 "2009-01-22T01:25:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > And now consider that Sacagawea was the only member of the Corps who spoke Shoshone, so when Lewis and Clark were negotiating with the Shoshone chief to buy horses, they had to go through the chain Lewis - Labiche - Charbonneau - Sacagawea - Cameahwait. Personally, I think it was only the fact that Cameahwait was Sacagawea’s brother that prevented some huge cultural misunderstanding from arising from the game of Telephone they were playing. I saw that in an “I Love Lucy” episode. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/45 "2009-01-22T06:09:15Z")
On the opposite end of the scale we have Sean Connery, who has been married to Micheline Roquebrune since 1975. Connery recently said that despite being married to a French-speaking wife for over thirty years, he doesn’t speak any French. Roquebrune’s English was described as “limited” and they have no other language in common. Connery attributed the success of their marriage to the fact that they can’t argue. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2009, 6:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/46 "2009-01-22T06:16:21Z")
> [@](#): > > I’m sure by the time the phrase “I want to buy a horse” got to Sacagawea it must’ve been something like “Does your wife hav sex with horses?” and the S-gal had to figure out what the heck Lewis was asking And by the time the message “Watch out for that rock up ahead” got through, what they actually meant to say was “We’re going to have to build a new boat.” ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/47 "2009-01-24T21:38:56Z")
Several people have asked if there’s a general test for language proficiency. The closest thing is probably the tests given by the U.S. government for their linguists. These are consistently rated for quite a few languages: > **[Defense Language Proficiency Tests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Proficiency_Tests)** > > The Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) is a battery of foreign language tests produced by the Defense Language Institute and used by the United States Department of Defense (DoD). They are intended to assess the general language proficiency of native English speakers in a specific foreign language, in the skills of reading and listening. An Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) is sometimes administered to Defense Language Institute students to establish the graduate's proficiency in speaking fo... Speakers can be ranked from 0 to 5. 5 is native proficiency. 0 (only a little knowledge of the language), 1 (some ability to use the language in a limited way), and 2 (some reasonable ability to use the language) are too low to come across as fluent speakers, I’m told. The threshold for what we’re talking about here is probably either 3 (a pretty good speaker who’s still clearly not at a native level) or 4 (a very good speaker who, as is occasionally clear, isn’t quite at a native level). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/48 "2009-01-24T22:36:36Z")
On that scale, how would one rate a person who speaks with a (comprehensible) foreign accent but otherwise flawlessly? Such a person is clearly not a native speaker, but nonetheless uses the language as well as a native speaker. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/73ab20/32.png) [@The\_Tao\_s\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tao_s_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/49 "2009-01-24T23:35:49Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > On that scale, how would one rate a person who speaks with a (comprehensible) foreign accent but otherwise flawlessly? Such a person is clearly not a native speaker, but nonetheless uses the language as well as a native speaker. Accent might not mean much. I’ve known of people who spoke English with a Mexican accent but spoke English as a first langauge. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2009, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/50 "2009-01-24T23:46:53Z")
> [@Windwalker](#): > > Imagine having thirty choices for, say, the word “confused” and having to constantly come up with the right ones on the fly at normal conversational speed. You probably won’t end up producing Japanese words if you’re speaking Spanish (confundido), but you may just end up saying the Italian version (confuso). [Actually, I believe Spanish can say “confuso” as well, but that refers to ideas rather than a person’s state of mind] Actually, I studied Spanish in high school, and Chinese in college, and a very annoying thing I’ve noticed is my tendency to get my Spanish and Chinese inter-tangled. Partially this is because there are a few words in both languages that are false cognates (“San” and “Bien” for example, can both be said in either Chinese or Spanish, but tend to have wildly different meanings) and even some gramattical particles that sound similar and have similar uses (“de” in Spanish" and “de” in Mandarin can both be used to attribute ownership, but are used in opposite “directions” in regards to the nouns) The former-Spanish speakers in our class came up with a theory where our brain keeps languages in two parts of our head: “Real languages” and “Made up languages that foreigners speak”;), basically, when speaking Chinese, if we hit a speed bump and were trying to maintain fluency in our speech, we’d grab for the first foreign word we found for the meaning we wanted, which often would either be Spanish or French in our class (much to the chagrin of the teacher). Now that I’ve spent a year trying to learn Chinese, I’ve found that when I try to speak Spanish, I’ll have to concentrate very hard not to switch into Chinese in mid sentence “Buenos Dias, me hablo Ragu, donde esta nide mama? Wo xuyao gen ta shuo yi shuo. _DAMMIT_. Perdoname.” ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2009, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010/51 "2009-01-25T02:43:09Z")
Chronos writes: \> On that scale, how would one rate a person who speaks with a \> (comprehensible) foreign accent but otherwise flawlessly? Such a person is \> clearly not a native speaker, but nonetheless uses the language as well as a \> native speaker. I suspect that would be a 4, but I’m not an expert on these tests, so maybe someone who knows more than I do should answer this question. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-languages-a-single-person-has-been-able-to-speak-fluently/482010.md?page=2)