Here Are the 3 Kind of Polyglots That Exist

Different paths but one common goal

Photo by Jeison Higuita on Unsplash

For the untrained eye, polyglots all look alike. They speak “many” languages and that’s it. The reality is quite different. There are 3 kinds of polyglots who follow different patterns but follow the same goal: gather knowledge in multiple languages.

1. The Language Family-focused polyglot

The first one, and most often found around the world, is the language-family focused polyglot. These are the people who learn 10 or more languages in 5 years. You could think they are “geniuses”, but they aren’t. Their system is much simpler.

The two most common ones are the “Europe-focused” (1) and “East Asia-focused” (2). Here are the most common languages spoken by those (English non-included):

1. French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (Romance languages); or German, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Dutch (Indo-European languages)
2. Japanese, Korean, or Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Cantonese (Different families but intertwined in common patterns).

What they do is to start with one language and spread from there. They apply the knowledge gained from one language to the next one, observing the similarities and thus reducing the initial shock your brain has to go…