This feature was first published in August 2025 in My Mensa Weekly, our exclusive newsletter for Mensa members. Find out more about becoming a Mensa member here.

Words: Claire Prentice

Polyglots, who are generally defined as those who can speak four or more languages, make up just 1% of the world’s population. Such people may study linguistics, work as translators or simply make a point of learning the language of every country they visit. It would seem history had its fair share of polyglots and hyperpolyglots, including an Italian cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti (1774-1849), who was fluent in at least 30 languages and studied an additional 42. But, are we born with this aptitude or can it be an acquired skill? Let’s take a seat in the language lab…

The polyglot brain

The word polyglot comes from the Greek polyglōttos, meaning ‘multiple tongues’, while hyperpolyglot, a term coined by the British linguist Richard Hudson in 2000, refers to a person who speaks a minimum of six languages.

While most learners set out to acquire a new language for professional or personal reasons, a small community of hyperpolyglots actively pursue language acquisition as a goal in its own right – rather like Munro-bagging for linguists, perhaps. HYPIA, the international association of hyperpolyglots, specify proficiency in six languages to qualify for membership, though some hyperpolyglots master many more. 

So, do polyglots have brains which are structurally or operationally different from monoglots (those who can speak just one language)? In 2004, scientists studied the preserved brain of Emil Krebs, a German diplomat who had died in 1930. Krebs was said to have spoken an astonishing 68 languages (he died while in the middle of working on a translation), and analysis of the Broca’s area of his brain – which is associated with language use – seemed to show structural differences when compared with other brains. However, researchers couldn’t be sure whether these differences were the result of learning so many languages or if he already had a brain structure that facilitated his extraordinary ability. 

MRI scans on the brains of polyglots, meanwhile, have shown variations between their functioning and those of monoglots. The former have “small and efficient” language networks, which use fewer neural resources than monoglots to process language. A recent experiment by researchers at MIT in Boston scanned the brains of polyglots while they listened to readings from the Bible and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in various languages.

Results showed that the language processing centres of the participants’ brains lit up while they listened to foreign languages they were familiar with. However, when they were played audio of their native tongue, language network activity dropped off significantly. The researchers concluded that “the acquisition and use of multiple languages makes language processing generally more efficient”. In other words, the process of learning new languages improves the brain’s capacity to process language as a whole.

So, are hyperpolyglots born or made? A 2018 article in The New Yorker entitled ‘The mystery of people who speak dozens of languages’ caused controversy by stating: “An extreme language learner has a more-than-random chance of being a gay, left-handed male on the autism spectrum, with an autoimmune disorder, such as asthma or allergies.”

Two years later, a conference paper sought to test this assertion. Researchers handed out 640 questionnaires at an international polyglot conference; The New Yorker argument, labelled hypothesis A was rejected in favour of hypothesis B. The study’s results concluded: “The successful and sustainable language learning achievements of polyglots are due to mutable factors, such as time spent studying, discipline and systematic study habits.”

If this paper is correct, then learning multiple languages is a skill that might be available to us all – with some hard work.

A word about healthy brains

An article published in 2023 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease has suggested that a fluency in just two languages, known as bilingualism, can delay the onset of symptoms of degenerative brain disease by up to five years by increasing “cognitive reserve through the long-standing executive control involved in managing multiple languages in the brain.”

So, could learning more than two languages offer even greater protection against dementia? Earlier this year, research published in The Journals of Gerontology analysed data from around 168,000 elderly subjects living in the north of the Netherlands. The study concluded that having and using a third or fourth language contributed to better cognitive functioning overall and could well add additional cognitive reserve.

It’s widely believed that learning a new language can bring health benefits as well as having a positive effect on your career and social life. Luckily, there are now more language learning resources available than ever before. So, when it comes to learning, “haijawahi kuwa na wakati mzuri Zaidi”: (that’s Swahili for “there’s never been a better time.”)