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

Hyperpolyglot: Richard Simcott
Richard Simcott, a well-known British “hyperpolyglot”—a polyglot who
speaks six or more languages—has uploaded videos online of himself using
sixteen languages in various levels. I met up with Richard to ask him how
he learns languages and what polyglots do differently from people learning
a single language.
As expected, he agreed with me that there really is no simple answer to
this question. He recalled another polyglot we both respect very much,
Professor Arguelles, who shares his incredibly intensive approach of getting
up early in the morning to write structured and precisely timed reviews of
books in many languages. This works excellently for him, as he is
passionate about reading languages, but it simply would not work for
Richard or me. For the two of us, such a structured approach would destroy
our motivation, because we like more spontaneous and random exposures to
languages, particularly in spoken contexts.
Richard sees himself as practical. He surrounds himself with the
languages he wants to work on by speaking them and consuming media. He
says there is no secret or magic formula. The only way to reach fluency, he
maintains, is through practice—granted, a lot of practice, but this type of
pure exposure and time with a language and intentional, focused work
toward improvement are key to learning a new language.
When I asked him how many languages he feels someone can
practically hope to learn, he said it really depends on how dedicated that
person is. “Languages,” he said, “are an essential part of my life and work.
This has allowed me to put the time into allowing each one to evolve.”
While we all imagine a typical impressive polyglot to know a dizzying
number of languages, all at a perfect mastery level with no accent, the
reality is that polyglots—myself and Richard included—tend to have some
languages they are still working to bring up to fluency and a smaller
manageable number at the higher levels. Richard says that he has rarely met
someone with eight or more languages at a fluent level (as I described
fluency earlier). He’s also never met someone who has learned a language
as an adult who could pass as a native speaker all of the time, even though
the person definitely could some of the time. He also doesn’t see why
someone would want to learn such a huge number of languages, realistically

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speaking. More numbers may sound “cool,” but we never need more than
just a few languages in our professional and personal lives.
It’s only really those who end up dedicating their work to language
learning who reach such high numbers. And more important, those must be
willing to dedicate a large portion of their lives to handling such a large
number.
In the end, having met many people from the polyglot community, I can
see that the number itself becomes less important than the sheer ability to
communicate and express yourself in a language you are passionate about.