Polyglots are often find it problematic to answer the question, “How many languages do you speak or know,” in a way that is truly meaningful and reflects total knowledge or ability. There are numerous issues that must be taken into consideration: Language vs. dialect. Differences in the understanding of ‘language proficiency’ and ‘fluency’. The mythical ‘native speaker model’. Domain vocabulary/knowledge. Active knowledge (speaking and writing) versus passive knowledge (listening comprehension and reading). The relative difficulty of languages in terms of lexicon, grammar, phonetics and writing systems. Target languages with many cognates and loanwords vs. languages with very few or none. Target languages with similar grammar and or phonetics vs those in which one or both are very different. In this presentation, I will explore these issues and others, while hoping to get feedback from the participants.

This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava 2018 ( https://www.polyglotbratislava.com/ ).