Polyglotism - Notable Dead Reputed Polyglots

Notable Dead Reputed Polyglots

It's generally impossible to prove the language abilities of dead people, and the claims are not backed up with reliable evidence of how the claims were confirmed. In fact, the claims often don't even mention which hundred languages the person supposedly spoke, how well they spoke them, or how they learned them (without the internet or modern dictionaries, and in a time of much less travel and cosmopolitanism).

With that said, the following are people whose names are associated with claims of massive multilingualism:

• John Bowring (1792–1872), an English political economist and the 4th Governor of Hong Kong.
• Dr Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou (1930–1989), a Middle Eastern political activist and economist who could speak 6 different languages fluently. He mastered 7 languages including his mothertongue.
• Hans Conon von der Gabelentz (1807–1874), a German linguistic researcher who worked on more than 80 languages.
• Utpal Dutt (1929–1993), an Indian actor, director, and writer-playwright and author. He could speak 8 languages.
• Cleopatra VII (69-30 B.C.), the last ruling Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. According to the Roman biographer Plutarch, she could speak 9 languages and was the only member of her dynasty who could speak Egyptian as well as her native Greek.
• Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), a German-English industrialist, social scientist, and father of Marxist theory alongside Karl Marx. He mastered over 20 languages.
• Nicolae Iorga (1871–1940), a Romanian historian, politician, literary critic, memoirist, poet, and playwright. He could speak Aromanian, Romanian, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek fluently at the age of fifteen.
• Emil Krebs (1867–1930), a German polyglot and sinologist. He mastered 68 languages in speech and writing and studied 120 other languages.
• Uku Masing (1909–1985), an Estonian linguist, theologian, ethnologist, and poet. He was claimed to know approximately 65 languages, and could translate 20.
• Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti (1774–1849), an Italian Cardinal. He supposedly spoke 39 languages fluently.
• John Milton (1608–1674), an English poet famous for his epic Paradise Lost. Milton could speak English, Latin, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Aramaic, and Syriac. He was also proficient in Old English. He coined 630 terms in the English language.
• Mario Pei (1901–1978), an Italian-American linguist and writer. He was claimed to be fluent in at least 38 languages and acquainted with the structure of more than 100.
• P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004), Indian lawyer, politician, and activist who served as the ninth Prime Minister of India (1991–1996). In addition to eight Indian languages (Telugu, Hindi, Urdu, Oriya, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil), he spoke English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German, Greek, Latin and Persian.
• Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) Pope John Paul II was fluent in many languages: his native Polish, as well as Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Croatian, Ancient Greek and Latin. On Easter Sunday, he would often give Easter Greetings to assembled Christians in their own language, for example, he would say "Happy Easter" in Japanese.
• Dr José Rizal (1861–1896), a Filipino national hero, optometrist, artist, author, and scientist who could speak 22 languages.
• R.M.P. Sosrokartono (1877–1918), a translator and war correspondent for the The New York Herald Tribune. He was claimed to speak 34 languages (24 non-Indonesian languages, 10 local Indonesian languages).
• Heinrich Schliemann (1820-1890), a German archaeologist who excavated Troy and Mycenaean civilizations, could speak German, English, French, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Swedish, Greek, Latin, Russian, Arabic, and Turkish.
• Teresa Tang (1953-1995), Taiwanese singer. She has recorded songs in, and fluent in Mandarin, Taiwanese, English, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indonesian. She can also speak Sichuan dialect, Shandong dialect, Malay & French.
• Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), a Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer. He could speak Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.
• Noah Webster (1758–1843), a lexicographer, English spelling reformer, and author. He mastered 23 languages.
• Harold Williams (1876–1928), a New Zealand journalist and linguist. He was claimed to speak more than 58 languages.
• Ernesto de la Peña (1927-2012), was a Mexican linguist and writer. He was claimed to speak 33 languages, including Russian, Hebrew, Italian, German, French, Classic Greek and Latin. He was also a great translator and a polymath.