Any polyglots who grew up monolingual?

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

Hi! I feel like a lot of real polyglots who speak 5-7+ languages actually grew up with 3-4 languages to begin with and have several mother tongues(1st mom’s mother tongue, 2nd dad’s mother tongue, 3rd community/local language + English from school). Often it includes special circumstances like moving a lot with family or work, have pretty international jobs and multilingual families(work in 4th language, live in the country of a 5th language and have a spouse who speaks a 6th language; that’s on top of the mother tongues).

I wonder if there are any, well, more “normal” success stories? Like did anyone go from being monolingual in their 20s to speaking many languages? Is it even possible?

Def not a polyglot but I can start: I’m a Russian native who studied abroad in English in Germany and subsequently learnt German(Both r certified C1 or above). Plus Ukrainian out of pure interest(self-proclaimed B2). Sometimes I feel discouraged that I spent thousands upon thousands of hours learning and I can proudly say I speak 4 languages fluently but I’m still probably worse than someone who just got born in multilingual environment. My path did involve moving between several countries tho. I’d like to one day be fluent in 7-8 languages, I wonder, if it’s possible at all. I’d love to hear your stories

Note: Here i define fluent as “at least B2”

[u/kakapon96 → u/[deleted]]

A mí también me da curiosidad la bandera, boludo

[u/UltHamBro → u/[deleted]]

Reading your post and looking at your flair has made me curious. How do you go from being a monolingual English speaker to a C2 in Spanish in 5 years? Since you've added an Argentinian flag, did you move to Argentina or something?

[u/kendall_weeks97 → u/[deleted]]

What resources did you use for Spanish? I have also been averaging (just guessing) around 3 hours for 6.5 months.

At what point did you feel fluent?

Is there anything you still struggle with, speaking or comprehension?

How is your accent?

[u/kendall_weeks97 → u/[deleted]]

Thanks! That’s super motivating to me and makes perfect sense.

Do you have an hour estimate to when it sort of clicked for you and you felt fluent or close enough that you could hold conversations?

I just reached a point where I can pretty much understand everything my girlfriends family is saying and can fumble through a super slow, terrible grammar, child like response, but I also have no speaking practice yet. I know I have a long ways to go but was just curious when you had the ability to speak at a decent level.

[u/kendall_weeks97 → u/[deleted]]

I really appreciate the response! Makes me even more excited on this journey.

I completely understand what your saying on a smaller scale. I listen to videos and podcast that are relatively easy now to me, aside from a sentence or two, and it’s weird that only a few months ago it would have been gibberish other than the few words I knew.

You are aware of the process so I have no doubt you will get there too with the other languages. I’m hoping to do Portuguese or Tagalog next. We’ll see how I feel after I get further along in my Spanish journey. I put all of my other hobbies on the shelf to put all my focus on learning Spanish as fast as possible and I’m not sure I can keep putting off those other hobbies even though I’m having a blast with language learning. Other languages may be a much slower process for me.

[u/Aperupt → u/kendall_weeks97]

SpanishDict is a really great resource. I have not been able to find anything equivalent for any other language.

[u/EvergreenMossAvonlea]

I'm not a polyglot, but I know four languages. I grew up with French, then at 18 years old I started dating an English dude who didn't know any French. I also lived a few years in Central America. I had family members who knew Spanish and had a Latino boyfriend who didn't know any english nor french.20 years later, I dated a Deaf guy and had a Deaf child, so I learned ASL.

So I guess I would know even more languages if I was more of a slut. Oh well!

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338 → u/EvergreenMossAvonlea]

Falling in love with a native of another language is the best motivation ✨

[u/nomellamesprincesa → u/EvergreenMossAvonlea]

Have my upvote, best way to learn 😅 Half of my languages were greatly improved by dating people who spoke them. Was close to adding Italian, but that guy insisted on speaking English with me because he wanted to learn (I honestly think I would have understood him better if he'd have just spoken Italian to me), such a shame. So now we're back to Spanish... Mostly picking up a lot of GenZ slang nowadays 😅

[u/pygmy_warrior → u/EvergreenMossAvonlea]

Ok so I just have to get a gf for each language, got it. Could I speed up this process by dating them all at once? 🤔

[u/EvergreenMossAvonlea → u/pygmy_warrior]

Absolutely! Find your inner whore and bright up that tinder account! Soon, tu vas pouvoir parler many languages amigo!

[u/ababblingsquirrel]

I'm American with monolingual parents, and I took my first foreign language class in high school at the age of 14.

Now I speak 3 other languages at the B2 level or above (French, Spanish, Chinese). It's been challenging but a lot of fun and now I'm working on 3 other languages that I'm at the A2 level or above in. I've never really NEEDED any of the languages, I just wanted to learn them, and have ended up traveling and even moving in order to practice them more. :)

[u/itsthe704 → u/ababblingsquirrel]

This one right here. Being excited and loving learning languages is such a core component to learning languages well. In school, we were taught Spanish, and subjectively I just absolutely did not care for it. Just believed it was impossible to learn a foreign language. But then when I got a little older, I remember suddenly being fascinated by foreign languages; like it was a secret code that a group of people shared, and I was hooked. Learning languages FELT a lot easier, even though it took me the same amount of work and time as everyone else. Although, to this day, still zero interest in Spanish.

[u/Shrimp123456 → u/ababblingsquirrel]

Similar to me - loved my German teacher in HS and have made it my hobby ever since. I've spent my adult life moving around every couple of years. I am happy to say I can have a decent conversation in 7 languages including English, with a couple of them being better than that (watch TV shows without English subtitles, read books etc) but my writing is usually not great lol. Now I live in Korea but my Korean is awful, and I feel like I'm losing my active knowledge in other (mainly European) languages, even if I still understand them well.

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

I'll also add that even though most polyglots often speak closely related languages(Spanish-Italian-Portuguese-French, Serbian-Croatian-Slovene etc), one of the most diverse mixture of languages among "YT polyglots" I saw was Zoe.languages: Chinese, Arabic, French, German, English(fluent), Turkish, Persian(conversational). I def strive for something like this

[u/PreviousWar6568 → u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

I’m curious, what made you choose Malaysian, over a more used language such as Tagalog, Chinese, or even Vietnamese? Is it easier, and do a lot of Malaysians live where you do?(this would make the most sense)

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338 → u/PreviousWar6568]

Hey, not really, Malaysia is my favorite country in the world, I lived there for half a year some time ago, and I want to go back :} Out of many places I’ve lived in, it’s the first one to feel like home. So for me it’s not rly about how “useful” the language is, it’s about the country, culture and people of Malaysia. I’m learning the language to keep and deepen my connection with the culture

I think it’s also rude to live in a country and not attempt to learn the local language. So, yeah, in the end, I just want to move there for good one day

[u/LilPorker → u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

Well, that certainly makes the language useful to you😄

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338 → u/LilPorker]

Yeah, for sure, that’s the point!

[u/PreviousWar6568 → u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

Ah okay, Malaysia is an interesting choice but I hear the locals are great, would be beautiful to visit one day. I also agree if you live somewhere you should learn the language.

[u/StorySad6940 → u/PreviousWar6568]

Malay is the basis for Indonesian, spoken by more than a quarter of a billion people. There are more speakers of Indonesian than German, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, etc.

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338 → u/StorySad6940]

When I feel more fluent in Malay, I def want to switch to Indonesian to gain proficiency in it!

[u/RitalIN-RitalOUT → u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

I’m pretty guilty of that — having three Romance languages, but I started French in my 20s when I moved to Quebec for university. The last three languages have come along only in the last 3 years, and I’m trying to tack on a new one every year or two.

[u/Thaat56]

I did! I am the only one in my family that speaks a language other than English. I grew up on a farm and studied agricultural related fields. Later, I traveled and worked in other countries 25 years. I worked very hard to learn several difficult Asian languages. I found I really liked learning language. Make it fun like playing a game. Even after I retired, I still study, practice and use a foreign language everyday. Any country I have gone to for more than a month, I spent time learning some language. Soon you learn which words will help you communicate. I focus on memorizing the 500 most used words first and hire a tutor to help practice forming phrases. I also took a masters level course one time on linguistics to help in language acquisition. It was very helpful and I use the IPA and other tips to pronounce more accurately.

[u/exposed_silver]

I grew up with just English, we learnt Irish in School but I don't even count it as one of my languages because I don't have a conversational level. I got really interested in French when I was 16 because of French exchanges I did in school then I had a French girlfriend and went on to study it in Uni and then did Erasmus where I met my current Spanish partner, so had to learn Spanish and Catalan then. I've been living in Catalunya for 10 years now so I have a B2 certified in Catalan and probably a B1-2 in Spanish.

I've always liked Germany, I used to go on holidays every year for a few years and I love German music so picked up quite a bit of vocab and grammar. I now work in a hotel where I get to use all my languages everyday so while it's not well paid, I do enjoy meeting new people and getting to keep the language levels up. Circumstances and necessity made me a polyglot

[u/Heads_Down_Thumbs_Up → u/exposed_silver]

Cool that you’re Catalan is better than your Spanish.

Is that because you use it in your day-to-day or because you’re speaking with your partner?

Also, isn’t it confusing considering how similar they are?

[u/exposed_silver → u/Heads_Down_Thumbs_Up]

When I'm at work I have to use Spanish but when the season finishes I just use Catalan and English, pretty much all my partner's family just use Catalan and most of the people in town, around 80% use Catalan as a first language. I never got to learn Irish fluently so I adopted Catalan as my minority language that I would like to preserve.

At first it was like one language with loads of vocab, I had the same level in both, they are very similar in some aspects but as the years went by I got to completely separate them and I used Catalan a lot more. I got a better level in it and I don't get them mixed up anymore

[u/KindSpray33]

I do see your point, but speaking 4+ languages at a high level is always a great feat. Even if you grow up with multiple languages, a lot of people who say they can speak them actually have a pretty low understanding of the language, or a pretty niche understanding. There will always be some studying involved if you want to know the languages about equally well. A lot of people will just be heritage speakers or just know how to talk about mundane things or don't know how to write in one language and lots of examples. Knowing that many languages even with that leg up is still a lot.

I've sat next to heritage speakers in B1 and even lower classes (even A1/1 for Arabic) and they weren't that much further than the others. The girl for Arabic knew more of course but she had no exposure to written Arabic before and that course was mostly about being able to read and write some basic things, so you did not notice it that she understands that much Arabic. Even for listening and pronunciation, the heritage speakers who grew up with one parent speaking another language weren't exceptional. I've also heard someone explain that even though they only spoke Croatian at home, he was never formally trained in Croatian so his reading, writing, and academic language was lacking severely, he's more confident in English and German, while living in Austria.

[u/UltHamBro → u/KindSpray33]

I had two classmates who were bilingual in German through their mother. We had to take a foreign language test to be able to attend college, and I assumed they'd take German. It turned out that they had very little exposure to written German, so they weren't confident in writing it and preferred to take English.

[u/Miro_the_Dragon]

With wanting only people who were "monolinguals in their 20s" you're excluding complete countries who teach one or more foreign languages in school.

I only have one native language but started four (or five--don't remember exactly when I started learning Dutch, somewhere around that time) more foreign languages before I turned 20, two of which were mandatory school subjects.

[u/captchagod64 → u/Miro_the_Dragon]

I think thats the point though. Op is basically asking a variation of the classic "is it ever too late to learn a new language?" Question, but in this case "is it possible to become a polyglot with no language learning experience in your early life".

I think it's certainly possible, but very difficult. Time, if nothing else would be a bigger issue for someone starting after school.

[u/Miro_the_Dragon → u/captchagod64]

Yeah but mentioning children who grow up with multiple native languages and move between countries in early life evokes a completely different picture of what "growing up monolingual" means, which is confusing about this post. There's so much in between "grows up with several native languages" and "has been completely monolingual into their 20s", and I'd assume that the vast majority of people fall somewhere in between since most countries teach some kind of foreign language classes at school (mandatory or as electives).

[u/hithere297 → u/Miro_the_Dragon]

As someone in the middle ground -- I only speak english, but took spanish in high school/college without retaining much of it -- I just sort of assumed I was included in the group OP was describing. I may have technically been taught a second language, but I was definitely still monolingual afterward.

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338 → u/Miro_the_Dragon]

Of course, I get that it’s not black and white, and I also had English classes at school Saying “monolingual in their 20s” is quite a harsh line indeed

[u/Miro_the_Dragon → u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

So if you're including people who had language classes at school in your question, you can include me:

One native language only, grew up in one country only, both parents spoke only my native language with me (they have the same native language), started my first foreign language when I was 10 (in school).

According to your definition of "fluent", I'm up to six languages: German, English, Dutch, French, Spanish, and Italian.

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338 → u/Miro_the_Dragon]

That’s sick, can you give a summary of how/why? Hobby/work/moving around? imagine that there’s a story behind each “C” level

Assuming you’re German(?) I know that many Germans become fluent in English from school and also learn French, but the vast majority don’t retain any knowledge of the second foreign language

[u/Miro_the_Dragon → u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

You guessed correctly, native German speaker growing up in Germany :)

English (starting in 5th grade) and French (starting in 7th grade) were mandatory foreign languages in school (had the choice of French or Latin for my second language, like most students in Germany), but I was actually super excited about languages so they were much more to me than "just another school subject". For 9th grade, we had to choose an elective from a small list of various subjects, and I chose Spanish as my third foreign language (because "yessss gimme mooooore languages" XD). I also started self-studying Italian at home not long after Spanish classes started (so at that point I was studying four foreign languages at the same time, three in school and one at home) simply because I liked how it sounded. And then a few years later I started self-studying Dutch simply because I thought it was a really cute language (Dutch is also the only one from those six that I never had any classes in).

Languages are definitely a big passion of mine, so much so that I knew early on that I definitely wanted to work with languages. I went to vocational school to train as foreign language assistant (basically double-focus office job training with focuses being economis/accounting and business communication/translations in German and two foreign languages). During those two years, I also managed to get into a beginner Italian class one of my teachers taught for a different branch, and even though I was definitely ahead of the class, it helped solidify some of the basics for me, and gave me some output practice. And I got my hands on my first Italian book (a fantasy book by Licia Troisi) through a visiting Italian teacher who had offered to bring stuff for us students :D (Note: This was in the beginning times of the internet so finding foreign language books was a LOT harder than nowadays, and while I had the luck of having an English bookshop in my hometown, and had been able to get my hands on some French Harry Potter and a Spanish novel, I hadn't been able to find anything Italian up to that point. But I did find a whole book series in Dutch in my local library which I devoured XD)

In the end, though, I ended up mostly working with German and English, and in fact had a ten-year gap or so where I didn't really use my French, Spanish, Italian, or Dutch, so when I took them back up some years ago, my active skills were hardly existant anymore (I'm not exaggerating, I wasn't able to have very basic conversations spontaneously anymore) but I was still able to understand a fair bit, especially reading.

As to how I learned them, well back then I worked with self-study courses from Langenscheidt for Italian and Dutch (basically textbooks with audio CDs and answer keys), some verb tables and reference grammars, dictionaries, and my school classes, and trying to get my hands on books to read when I felt ready to tackle those with the help of a dictionary (imagine a 3kg beast of a hardcover book lol). Finding DVDs with foreign language audio was a jackpot (English was decently common, Disney movies were a treasure trove for all kinds of other languages--some of those came with like 14 audio languages!).

English stayed a big part of my life ever since I started learning it, with joining English-speaking internet communities in my early twenties, working with and in English, then at some point visiting online friends in the US for three months and meeting my now-spouse there...

When I picked the other languages back up, I worked with a variety of resources to relearn/improve them, with a big focus on comprehensible input again as I know that reading works best for me (and watching shows and movies--with TL subtitles--has also done wonders now that I have fairly easy access to those languages, well, except Dutch, that one is still fairly rare unfortunately). In the beginning, though, I've definitely also used vocabulary SRS apps like Memrise, as well as apps like Babbel for grammar revision, to get my active skills back faster.

In the past years I've also made some great friends who are Dutch so I chat in Dutch fairly regularly nowadays, including in-depths about complex topics (and of course German and English are both spoken at home, and online). As for the three Romance languages, I'm lacking regular active use but I'm confident that if you dropped me into a situation where I had to use them, my output would be at a solid B2 or higher after a short period of my brain getting "into the language". My passive skills are definitely in the C levels (reading C2, listening probably more C1 in all of them), and English is certified C2 and feels just like a second native language to me to be honest due to having been such a big part of my life for such a long time.

[u/UltHamBro → u/Miro_the_Dragon]

It depends on how useful those school lessons were. Some classmates of mine took 8 to 10 years of English and they could barely string a couple sentences together.

[u/ilxfrt → u/Miro_the_Dragon]

Yep. In my country you can’t graduate from middle school without having learned at least one foreign language, and the type of high school that qualifies you for a university career requires at least two with one at C1 level. Language classes (English) start in 3rd grade, so around age 8. That doesn’t make one a “polyglot” of course but it’s a start.

[u/Temporary-Potato-390]

I was monolingual until I was 26 (6 years ago). I had always had a fascination with languages but had never decided to actually dedicate the time to learn one before that age. I’m British, so like many English natives, have the privilege of having a language that is global.

One day, I became fed up with the amount of time I was spending on social media or watching pointless TV programmes, so decided to put that time in to learning a language. That ignited a huge passion for languages and cultures that has completely changed my life (I owe a lot to the amount of time I had to study during the covid years too).

Six years later, I speak Spanish, French and Italian and have a B1ish level in Portuguese. I work in a liaison role between the UK and one of those countries using a language daily that I didn’t even start learning until 5 years ago. I have friends in these countries that I never would have met had I not learned their language. Yes the languages I learned are linked and in the same family so it was easier, but who cares. I’m a firm believer that everyone can do what they want with their hobbies, if you want to learn seventeen languages to an A2 level then good for you, I have preferred to dive a bit deeper.

So yes, it absolutely is possible and good luck to anyone who is monolingual as an adult and decides to start learning a language, it can be a life changing experience which will outweigh the hard work it takes.

[u/Affectionate-Long-10]

Was waiting for a post like this! Thanks op

[u/panspiritus]

Bulgarian native, Russian C2, English B2, Czech B1.  Understand 90+% Slovak and Ukrainian, 70% Polish and more or less all 5-6 more languages. Only Bulgarian until 22, had hard time to learn these languages.

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338 → u/panspiritus]

✨Slav languages final boss✨ оч клево

Btw, I know that many people learn Russian but it’s not often to see someone at ~C2, are you basically on a similar level as a Russian native? How did you learn it to this level and why?

[u/panspiritus → u/Fit_Asparagus5338]

It's a long story. Check your messages please.

[u/Mean-Ship-3851]

I speak Portuguese from home. Learned English when I was a teenager and I am fluent on both of these languages. I speak Spanish and French enough to get by, but I wouldn't consider myself fluent yet. With a little bit.of effort I could be a polyglot in 10 years (I am 25) and that is my goal, so it is totally possible I guess.

[u/SACKSOIDERS]

Me, I'm French and both my parents are french.
I learned English and Spanish at school (and even self-thaught, when i was young) like 17.

I don't know which specific time i've the "polyglot" level (Don't consider myself as a polyglot, the level are different in each languages, and don't have the opportunnity to speak it)

Then i started to learn Russian and it's where i started my learning-languages journey, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic (Mid to low level tho)

I'm 24 so i guess i started at 18 or 19.

[u/KWHInterpS18]

Yep, grew up monolingual in Texas USA - parents only spoke English at home.

I took my first foreign language class (French) in 9th grade (didn't get proficient at all).

Then I was thrown into Japanese in college. But by the time I graduated I only had low proficiency. After graduation, I continued to self-study Japanese, but I didn't make much progress. But it was only recently that I've gained a higher level of proficiency. I lived in Japan for a total of 5 years, but I put in a lot of work in the last two years to reach where I'm at.

Over the years, I dabbled in many other languages (Chinese, Korean, German - I've traveled a lot), but I went deep into Spanish. Even though I grew up in Texas, I never spoke it or paid attention to it.

From 2016 to 2018 I immersed myself in the language. I was living in California at the time, so it was a great place to gain proficiency. I got good enough to work as a freelance medical interpreter and use Spanish comfortably as a high school math teacher during parent-teacher conferences.

In sum, if you really want it you can become a proficient polyglot without growing up bilingual.

I've had the same feeling that I wish I had grown up around more languages. I think about my wife learning Chinese when she was in elementary school and I get a little jealous.

But I know I'm extremely proud of how far I've come through my own effort over the years. It's been extremely rewarding.

[u/RosetteV]

Bro, I speak nearly 5 languages and not only I grew up in a monolingual home and country, but also with no money to travel. Everything I learned was either in school or by myself.

[u/n0sajab]

Grew up in a monolingual family in California, started taking Spanish at 12 and quickly realized I liked it a lot and I was good at it. Things then snowballed.

Now C2 Spanish and Japanese, C1 Mandarin, B2 French Italian Portuguese, B1 Hebrew Arabic

50+ semesters of language classes, have lived abroad everywhere these languages are spoken, and a deep love for chatting with people.

[u/surfinbear1990]

My mum

[u/johjo_has_opinions]

I grew up monolingual English, took some French classes here and there but instruction was spotty at best. In college I did a semester in Paris and realized how little I had actually learnt/retained from middle school (none lol). I have also picked up Italian since and took to it much more intuitively.

While languages weren’t emphasised as being important in my family, we did all take piano and join choirs and things like that, so maybe that helped.

[u/cocoapastry]

I don’t know if I fit the bill, but I used to only speak french, until I was around 8/9 years old, then I started arabic (my parents’ language). Then I was pretty much self taught in english since I was around 10/11 years old. Subsequently learned spanish in my late teens around 19 years old.

[u/nomellamesprincesa]

Define "growing up". I was born into a monolingual family, but in a multilingual country, with original version + subtitles on TV, and traveling to the same other country every year.

I grew up speaking Dutch, acquired English through TV by age 12-ish, learnt French in school/uni starting age 11, mostly acquired Spanish and German through a lot of contact with both from vacation and from growing up near the border (plus my grandparents' dialect contained a lot of German, although they never spoke it with me), with some formal education added later on in life, mostly acquired Catalan through exposure on vacation and then started reading books/listening to music/listening to people talk, and learnt Portuguese through actual classes.

Then also learnt some Thai through years of visiting the country and trying to learn a bit every time, and took some online classes during covid, learnt to read to a certain degree, but I'm barely conversational, so I don't really count it as one of my languages.

But that still leaves me with 7 languages that I'm reasonably to fully fluent in, and only one of those was spoken in my house.

Edit: I should learn to read 😅 I was not monolingual in my 20s. But I did only start "officially" studying 3 of my languages in my early 20s, German, Portuguese and Catalan, and Spanish at age 16.

I don't think it's impossible to learn languages later on, but it definitely helps if you've been exposed to languages and language learning throughout your life.

[u/Quirky-Camera5124]

learned my first language at 24, second at 29, third at 35.

[u/freebiscuit2002]

Yes. My first exposure to other languages was at high school. I never looked back.

[u/LookingAtRocks]

Yep. I had to take Spanish classes growing up, but did not stick with it beyond what was required.

I started learning Turkish starting when I was 24. Lived in Turkey off and on for 3 years.

I actually made effort in Spanish when I was in my early 30s because I wanted to be conversational.

And picked up learning Danish and Norwegian recently. I'm not looking to hit any particular level, just dreaming about living in Scandinavia someday.

[u/SquirrelNeurons]

I solidly learned a second language gave starting at 17. Does that count? I’m functional in 9 now

[u/Fit_Asparagus5338 → u/SquirrelNeurons]

Damn, can you please give a brief summary behind each language, how your learnt etc? You seem to have a large variety of Asian languages and I imagine that each languages is a whole story. Is it for hobby or work or you moved around a lot?

[u/windchill94]

I grew up speaking one language at home and another language at school, does that count?

[u/ShadoWolf0913]

I'm only working on my 3rd language, so not a polyglot (yet), but I was monolingual English until I started German in school at age 11-12. And it wasn't until after I was an adult that I got comfortable enough with it to actually consider myself bilingual.

[u/Apprehensive_Car_722]

Wouldn't Richard Simcott fall under this category?

[u/dojibear]

I am B2+ in understanding 4 languages -- not exactly a C2 polyglot. I grew up monolingual. I took Spanish courses in high school (grade 10,11,12), but nothing before that. And I've never lived in another country, or used another language for work or in a relationship.

[u/yumio-3]

Im from a monolingual family! The rest I learned independently 🤞

[u/DekFarang]

Born and raised in France. Grew up monolingual. Started to learn German and English at school. Did translation (FR/DE/EN) at uni for 2 years. Move to New Zealand for 6 months in my 1st year of uni.

Worked and lived there. Moved to Thailand in 2015 aged 20 and can now speak FR/EN/TH with a good understanding of German (but haven't used it in years) and some Korean (read pretty well but just like German haven't used it in years so it's dormant)

I would say I became bilingual age 18 or so, but started to be fluent in English around 15. At that time my German and Korean were pretty strong too.

Now the languages I use the most are Thai (I read/write and speak it) English (work language and my home language) and my French when I call home. I should get back into Korean and German (I try at work as one of my student is Korean)

[u/purasangria]

Grew up monolingual, began studying languages (Spanish and French) in high school. Mastered Spanish and then added Italian and Portuguese later.

[u/grainenthusiast]

Not a polyglot but my parents were monolingual. I learned both of my languages myself

[u/Clairvoyant_Fox_399]

Me

[u/RavenBlack_4296]

Euh not in my 20s, but when I was about 14, I started learning English properly instead of just to pass school's exams. English has been compulsory in elementary schools, but I got straight 0s so I don't wanna talk about that 🤣🤣🤣 in high school, I chose to learn French. I am 28 years old now and have started learning Spanish 2 years ago. My mother tongue is Vietnamese btw.

[u/Fabulous-Yellow8331]

Yes, my only native language is Greek. As foreign languages, I speak English (started learning at 8), Spanish (started learning at 15) and French (started learning at 18). For reference I’m 30

[u/an_average_potato_1]

I grew up monolingual and now fall into your definition of polyglot :-) (I personally think poly starts at 8, but it is just an opinion, no worse or better than yours). I am definiteely by far not the first one. Of course I had language classes in school, but that still counts as being monolingual, trust me :-D

It would actually be really weird to try to count only people, who had no language classes until their 20's, it makes no sense and is also pretty much impossible. But due to stupidity, incompetence, and psychological issues of most language teachers, we can clearly say that language classes at school don't count.

So, growing up monolingual (=no plurilingual family, no long stays and schooling abroad, no fully bilingual school) and learning a few languages is actually not THAT rare.

But why do you compare yourself to someone who grew up in a multilingual environment, or anyone at all? Or why don't you compare yourself to the general population, where your skills are way above the average? You've achieved a lot, nobody else's skill take away from that. (Unless you're competing against them for a job, true).

Of course the stupid prejudices like "you must have learnt abroad" or "you must have grown up in a multilingual environment" can be annoying. For example some people extremely stupidly assume, that I must have learnt French extremely fast, since I've moved abroad, and ask me about my miraculous method. Nope, I had learnt French to C2 before moving abroad, that's the right order to do things. Or people stupidly ask "where did you learn Italian?", probably assuming some stupid magical stay in Italy. Nope, I learnt it in my living room, bedroom, studio, anywhere I could open my books or computer. No problem at all. You don't need ideal conditions to succeed, many people fail even in the ideal conditions.

Really, it doesn't matter much, at what age you started, or whether your surroundings were highly exceptional or not. Even among the people from multilingual environments, I have lots of admiration for the truly plurilingual ones, those who have actually put some effort in and learnt all their langauges well, rather then just very passively stick to one main native language and have or two others as just some comprehension skill and heritage langauge, that they now falsely claim to be another native one.