Polyglotism - Objective Criteria

Objective Criteria

With the advent of computers, linguists obtained a better understanding of what "knowing a language" may mean. It is estimated that the highest frequency 2000 words (in all or most of their multiple senses) cover roughly 75-80% of a general text in English and other European languages and that such limited vocabulary also allows one to express even more complicated concepts, describing them by means of circumlocutions (e.g. 30,000-50,000 words in today's learner's dictionaries of English are defined with merely 2000-3000 defining vocabulary words, as a rule). On the other hand, a native speaker with "college education" (US) may possess 25,000-30,000-word passive vocabulary (of which it can activate various parts), and passive vocabularies of educated native speakers increase with age to up to possibly 50,000 words or more at the age of 50-60.

Therefore it is difficult to judge objectively many claims to polyglotism, as what is ostensibly "fluent speech" can be achieved with active mastery and assertive use of a very limited general-purpose, or even limited specialized vocabulary. A native speaker activating 1000 out of 40-50,000 in his writing, or a glib "polyglot" whose limit is around 2000-3000 are very different types of a "fluent speaker".