I can confidently say that I speak Portuguese, Spanish, and English to varying degrees. However, at a beginner level, I know Norwegian, Italian, and Polish. I also am probably at a very beginner level in Russian and French, both of which I’m learning and getting better at. I’m conversing with French people.
My fiancé says I’m a polyglot, but I don’t know if I’m just trilingual or not.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter how many languages you speak somehow you end up not being able to communicate anyway because of the language. Some anecdotal evidence:
I speak Polish, German, Swedish and English. Me and my siblings went to Morocco for vacation, my sister was vegetarian and we wanted to order something without meat. The guy at the street food stand didn’t understand and then he asked: Do you speak Arabic? No, Do you speak Spanish? No, do you at least speak French? Also no. None of the languages helped even tho the other guy also spoke 3 languages.
After speaking 4 languages fluently I moved to Korea thinking it’ll be easy to pick up another language. After 4 years of living here I still can’t even have a very simple conversation. The language is so different that even after trying hard and spending money and time the learning doesn’t move forward. And me working from home mostly with Europeans makes it even more difficult, but I can’t get a local job without the language, chicken and egg problem.
Every language is good to know, and I kind of agree with my grandfather that every language is like another hand you have to disposal, but somehow you end up in situations that even 6 hands are not enough ;)