Re: OT: How common is it to speak 5+ languages?

> >So, how common would you say it is for someone to be conversant enough
> >in 5+ languages where it's more than what your average "teach
> >yourself" book is going to prepare you for?
From my experience:

I speak a bunch. English, Spanish, French, Russian, ASL pretty much
fluently (though half-illiterate in Russian, since I learned it at
home and never read much; can't write at all) - "fluently" as in "good
enough to hold intelligent (intelligble?) conversation on most common
topics". It wouldn't be too hard to break my vocabulary knowledge with
jargon, but I learn that fast; just a matter of experience. I know a
few more - Arabic, Japanese, Mandarin - from school, but never got
good enough to have a critical mass of it, and so they have declined a
lot since then (sad, since my once-almost-fluent Japanese is now just
able to do phrases).

This, however, seems to be a major aberration around here (Bay Area,
CA currently; upstate NY before).

My parents know several Cyrillic languages - both Russian immigrants;
I have a cousin (a poet / Russian teacher at NWU) who knows about a
dozen languages fluently, half of them close relatives.

I've a few friends - generally children of immigrants - who grew up
speaking some relatively-obscure branch (e.g. Latvian) and then
learned the more common one (e.g. Russian). Plus English makes 3, and
it's not that unlikely to learn one or two more in high school or
college. Native English speakers wouldn't get that head start.

I suspect that people in Europe would be more easily exposed to a wide
variety of languages (geographically), and hence more likely to speak
several. I remember asking a customs agent once about this, and they
said it was part of the job requirement to speak at least [some list
of 5+].

 - Sai

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