Polyglot

 

Polyglots are people who speak numerous languages as a pastime or as a profession. A multilingual individual is someone who can actively communicate in multiple languages (through speaking, writing, or signing). Multilingual persons can write in any language they speak, although they can't always write in the same language they speak. Bilingual and trilingual people, on the other hand, are those who are in similar settings involving two or three languages, respectively. At least one language, the so-called first language, has been acquired and retained by multilingual speakers since childhood. The first language (also known as the mother tongue) is learned without formal education, through mechanisms that are hotly debated. Simultaneous bilinguals are children who learn two languages simultaneously. Even among simultaneous bilinguals, one language usually takes precedence over the other.

The concept of a "native speaker" is intimately linked to first language acquisition in linguistics. Linguists agree that a natural speaker of a language has a level of skill that a second (or subsequent) language learner cannot readily achieve. As a result, descriptive empirical language studies are typically conducted with just native speakers. This viewpoint is, however, somewhat problematic, given that many non-native speakers not only successfully engage with and in their non-native language societies, but may also contribute culturally and linguistically to their non-native language (as writers, politicians, media personalities, and performing artists, for example). Linguistic research has recently focused on the usage of widely spoken world languages, such as English, as a lingua franca or shared common language within professional and commercial communities. Most speakers of the common language are functionally multilingual in lingua franca contexts.