Exploring Hyperpolyglots Survey

This page provides more details about the Babel No More hyperpolyglot survey, which is intended to create a snapshot of aspects of the phenomenon called "hyperpolyglottism."

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Rationale

I needed to collect information from as many people as possible all over the world, cheaply and efficiently, and an online survey is one way to do this. The results will inform these four questions:

1. How proficient can an individual be in how many languages?

2. What is the difference between the number of languages one can learn over one's lifetime versus the number of languages one can know at the same time?

3. How do hyperpolyglots define what it means to "know" or "speak" or "use" a language? What criteria do they use when they say they "know" a language? Many definitions exist, but I wanted to know how it was defined by massive multilinguals themselves - not by governments, academics, or non-polyglots.

4. How do social, linguistic, and organic factors influence the learning of many languages? 

The broader goal is this one:

To expose the anecdotes and lore about massive language learners to some empirical rigor and theoretical models of language acquisition, language use, memory, and processing.

No one has ever done this before. 

Methodology

The survey collects information on several dimensions:

1. Basic demographics -- where are people, how old are they, and where do they come from?

2. Massive language learning as an individual endeavor -- is it the same as being a "good language learner"?

3. Language learning as a cognitive behavior -- what other styles or attributes correlate with massive language learning, such as musical and computer programming skills or spatial skills?

4. Spoken proficiency -- what are you able to do in each of the languages you say you know?

As I write in the survey, it would be ideal to arrange an interview in each language with a trained native speaker in order to evaluate your proficiency. Given the huge numbers of languages, this could be expensive and time-consuming, especially as I don't know how many hyperpolyglots there are out there. In fact, language self-assessments are highly correlated with actual proficiency (Kenyon et al., 2001).

Sure, any language proficiency test can be criticized for a range of shortcomings, but applying a consistent set of criteria that have been validated elsewhere is more important than having a perfect proficiency test. Trying to answer the questions above has, so far, been crippled by inconsistent criteria applied to individuals and groups.

Why Six Languages?

Dick Hudson, a linguist at University College, London, coined the word "hyperpolyglot" to refer to people who are able to learn and use six or more languages. Why six or more? Because Hudson determined that in communities, normal individuals regularly use five languages, so anything above five languages marked a special case. As a linguist might say, speaking five or fewer languages is the "unmarked" case, while speaking six or more is the "marked" case.

Testing & Development

This survey was designed with the help of experts in applied linguistics, psychology, language testing, and online survey design. It was also vetted by hyperpolyglots and talented language learners. The promises about confidentiality and anonymity and the statement of informed consent are meant to minimally satisfy academic requirements and the scientific usefulness of these results.

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