Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

part of me, it is much more likely to slip away, such that you go down an
entire level in a very short time and even forget the basics. Of course, you
can still get rusty with lack of practice at a B2 level and above, but within a
very short time you can get back to where you used to be.
How Many Languages Can a Person Learn?
The obvious question is, what’s the limit? And, since we’re on the topic,
how many languages do I speak? Whether that number is six, eight, twelve,
or fifteen will depend on when you ask me the question and the nature of
what “speak” means to you.
The American polyglot Tim Doner agrees with this, and while media
mentions of him may list him as speaking twenty languages, he and all
other polyglots much prefer to avoid sound bites that work well in
newspaper articles; he prefers to give answers that define the levels he may
have in each language or list how many he has a mastery level in or how
many he can “get by” in, and so on. Generally, a true polyglot is quick to
avoid giving simple answers.
For most people, though, such a high number is not necessary or
possible, not because they don’t have the inherent talent, but because they
don’t live the kind of travel lifestyle that I do or have the passion for
languages other polyglots do, where languages are such a huge part of their
daily lives. Learning languages indeed starts to become a full-time job!
But never listen to anyone (including me!) who tells you what your
limitations are; I can only speak for my own limitations and suggest that
these may apply to other people, as I have done in this book. I have met
people busier than I am but more passionate for languages, and they
overtake my number of languages at a fluent level or higher. Some would
dismiss them as geniuses, but to me it’s more a question of passion. In
talking to them in person I can feel this passion and appreciate that they are
mere mortals, with their own challenges in language learning, but I could

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see the passion they have as they use and talk about languages. This decides
how many languages they can ultimately speak.
I do, however, feel that becoming a polyglot is well within the realm of
possibility for mere mortals (of which I count myself!) who can’t set aside a
vast number of hours each week for learning or maintenance (which was the
case for me during the first years of my travels, because I worked full-time
in non-language-learning jobs). How many languages you ultimately reach
will depend on you, your dedication to and passion for each language, and
the time you are willing and able to set aside.
At first, when people hear that I attempt to take on a new language in
just three months, they presume this must mean I learn four languages a
year. They also think that I should know forty languages because I’ve been
learning foreign languages while traveling for a decade.
There have actually been a lot of languages that I have taken on but
decided not to maintain. As a result, my fluency level dropped dramatically.
I can still reactivate them and go through the learning stages again, and do
so much faster because the language is in there somewhere. But
realistically, if you speak to me in that language, I can’t engage in the kind
of conversation I had when I was focused on that language. Sadly, this has
been the case for half of the languages I have taken on.
The reason for this is that when you start to learn as many languages as
I have, you reach a limit in the number of hours you can put into them. You
have to make some tough decisions. In my case, if I wasn’t absolutely
inspired to keep living through that language for the rest of my life, I let it
go. Some languages, however, have had a much deeper effect on me. I
continue to return to and study these languages.
It’s always due to pull factors rather than push factors. Irish is important
to me as an Irish person. Because Brazil is my favorite country, I’ll always
speak Portuguese. Spanish represents such an important part of my life, so
I’ll always try to maintain the language.
No matter how many languages I learn, however, there is a saturation
point. I may eventually reach a certain number of languages I maintain and
then stick to that number, even if I decide to learn a new language
temporarily for travel purposes. There comes a point when you have to
accept that taking on a new language would hurt maintaining your current
ones too much. You only have a certain finite amount of time and should
use it wisely.

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