Records: The Cardenal Giuseppe Mezzofanti (1774-1849) he was the boss of the library of the Vaticano. When he was 12, he talked arround 10 languages, when he died at age of 75, he talked 40 easyly. In 1846, he said that he knew 78 languages and dialects. Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), explorer y traducer, talked betwen 25 y 30 languages and a minumum of 15 dialects. The Wordls Guinness Records says that the New Zealand Harold Williams (1876-1928) was the best linguist of the world, with 58 languages and other dialects like Swahili, Hausa y Zulu, ... The biggest polyglot in life is Ziad Fazah (1954-), wich speaks 58 languages, incluiding arabic, french, english, chinese, japanese y portuguese and others.