This talk is a distillation of findings in polyglottery as a science whose object is multilingual knowledge and which tries to understand the cognitive processes that enable polyglots to achieve their outstanding results. I will try to show what light polyglots’ practical experience sheds on the nature of language learning, and will address such questions as what a polyglot is, what it means to know a language, how language knowledge can be qualified, how fast a functional command of a foreign language can be attained, how many languages one can know and how proficiency in foreign languages can be acquired more efficiently. I will propose a tentative definition of a polyglot and will mention such things as “the law of seven”, “the main law”, the “formula” and the stages of language learning, the hierarchy of learning materials, and the range of time investments needed for polyglottery.
I will partially draw on and present the recently published proceedings of the conference, Multilingual Proficiency: Language, Polyglossia and Polyglottery, held by The American Society of Geolinguistics in New York City in September 2013 (with the participation of A. Arguelles, A. Rawlings, T. Doner and others).

This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava 2017 (www.polyglotbratislava.com).