Multilingual

A multilingual person or polyglot is the name for a person with a high degree of proficiency in several languages.

The world greatest living polyglot is Ziad Fazah[?] (born 1954) who apart from his mother tongue[?] Arabic is reported to speak 55 other languages. Calculations as to how many languages now-dead polyglots spoke is difficult, since no one can offer a objective description of what is required to "know a language" fluently, but the greatest linguist in history is believed to be cardinal Giuseppe Gaspardo Mezzofanti[?] (1774-1849), who is reported to have spoken up to a hundred languages fluently. On a visit from the Lord Byron, he surprised Byron by showing a more extensive knowledge of local London slang than the poet himself.

Noted polyglots (12 or more languages):

• Cardinal Giuseppe Gaspardo Mezzofanti[?] (1774-1849), Italian ecclesiast
• sir John Bowring[?] (1792-1872), British M.P.
• Harold Williams[?] (1876-1928), New Zealandish journalist
• sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), British explorer/orientalist
• sir William Jones (1746-1794), British philologist
• Narsimha Rao (born 1921), Indian politician
• Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832), French egyptologist
• Thomas Young (1773-1829), British scientist
• Ezra Pound (1885-1972), American novelist

Note: a bilingual person can speak two languages fluently, a trilingual[?] three.