My favourite polyglot is my brother. He managed to learn 7 languages at a B2+ level. If today I can speak 4 languages and am going for my fifth, it is because he inspired and showed me that a monolingual life is boring and completely hard to live when you’re no anglophone.

My favorite polyglots are my students! I teach at a private high school. A few years ago, one of my students approached me for office hours because he just wanted to talk about his love of languages and to gain some new language learning strategies. At his suggestion, we began a polyglot club the following year. My club members are all students ages 12-18 who come to the club to practice their languages, build community, and encourage one another. They speak a wide variety of languages and maintain language wish lists for their future studies. They've written newsletter articles together on the benefits of learning a foreign language and shared their work with the whole school. These young people will be shaping the future, and I hope they will bring the world closer to one another, no matter what our languages, as they grow. Because the club is in our second year now, we also have alumni. These young men and women are freshmen in great colleges, some studying languages and linguistics as their majors, and continuing to grow in and through their language studies. Learning a language requires humility and perseverance. Whatever these young students do with their language skills, those two characteristics will shape them to be compassionate leaders in tomorrow's world.

Flávia Scaldelai

Dmitrii Petrov from Russia.

Lídia Machová because she studied at my university and is from the same country as me and teaches people how to learn languages