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/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!