Is There A Limit To How Many Languages You Can Learn?

When you start learning one language, you will very quickly start thinking about the next one and eventually you will start to wonder how many you can actually learn.

You will start to ask even more questions when you find out about polyglots, who can speak multiple languages, you will really wonder if there is a limit.

Although there are plenty of things that can affect how many languages you can learn, which I will discuss below, it, seems that a realistic limit for most people, who work hard at it, is around 5 or 6 languages before it become too overwhelming.

There Is A Finite Number Of Languages You Can Learn

Let’s start with the obviously point that there are only so many languages in the world. It is hard to give an exact figure as languages change throughout regions or merge or even go extinct, but there are roughly 7000 languages in the world.

So if we want to be pedantic, yes, there is a limit to how many languages you can learn, as at some point you will run out of new languages.

However, I’m sure if you have tried to learn one language, you will understand it takes a while and you will quickly realise reaching this limit is probably going to take a very, very long time.

Is There A Limit To How Many Languages You Can Have In Your Brain?

If we ignore the fact that you can eventually run out of languages to learn and just look at your brains ability, it is quite interesting.

In theory there is no limit. You brain has the ability to just continually learn. You are not suddenly going to become “full” like a hard drive and have no more space to input new information.  

As you learn something, you will start building a physical neural network in your brain between the new information and what you already know. The more you learn, the stronger these networks become and it seems like you can still form these throughout your whole life.

The only issue is when you start to get a degenerative brain disease. At this point your brain is basically damaged, or not really working properly anymore. If you have ever met anyone with this horrible disease, you will understand, but up until this point you can keep learning new things. 

However there is a slight issue…

Use Your languages Or Lose Them

Our brains are very efficient and like to keep things streamlined. While there is no limit to how much you can input, your brain will try and filter things and only keep the information which it thinks is important.

If I asked you what you ate for lunch on the 16^th June 2020, can you tell me? For some of you this will be a very significant date and you will know exactly what you had, for a lot of us, this was just another day. Our brains will store this information for a few days after the event, and then classify it is insignificant so it basically deletes it from the system.

It knows this information is pointless after this date and like I said, it likes to stay efficient and streamlined. It will not keep every memory you ever make for this exact reason.

This is very important for language learning. If you are not using a language your brain is going to start classifying it as pointless information and start forgetting it.

This means that when we learn a language, we have to keep practicing it to maintain it. This will keep it strong in our minds and let our brain know that this is important information that we need to store long term. If you do not use it, you lose it.

Time Is Against You When Learning Languages

Time is probably the biggest limiting factor and you are more likely to hit a logistical limit far sooner than a cognitive limit.

Learning a language just takes time. The brain needs lots of repeated exposure to slowly build links between everything and put it all together.

Even if you spend an hour a day, it is still going to take around 2 years before you are in any way confident with the new language and even after this you still need to use the language often to maintain your level and improve.

You can hopefully start to see how this might be a problem. If there are 7000 languages and only 24 hours in a day, you are really going to struggle to logistically fit all of these in. Trying to balance learning new languages as well as maintaining ones you have learned is going to be very tricky and it is very easy to become overwhelmed.

If we try and do some silly maths you will start to see how you are going to be in trouble pretty quickly. If we say that you will live to be 90 years old, you would need to learn nearly 78 new languages a year…from birth, to learn them all. Now let’s say you spend 20 hours a day studying all of these languages. That would mean you would need to learn 4 languages an hour. So you only get to spend 15 minutes a day on each language.

Let’s say you do manage to do this… which is impressive since you’re only 1 year old, but anyway, the next year you would need to do to this again with another 78 new languages… but also keep practicing the 78 from the year before. So I guess you only have 7 or 8 minutes per language a day, for 20 hours straight. This just keeps getting worse and worse every year.

So yeah, that is a silly example, but you can start to really see how time is against you. Managing how much you can learn, while still maintaining what you know is pretty tough. When you start to put everyday life into the mix you can see that time is really going to be one of your biggest limiting factors to how many languages you can learn.       

(You can read more information about How Long Will It Take To Learn A Language?)

Cross Language Confusion is A Real Risk

So maybe you do try and learn a decent amount of languages all at once. Maybe not 78 like in the example above, but maybe a small handful.

This might seem possible, but it is still quite difficult. There is an old saying “Jack of all trades, master of none.”

This is very true for language learning. Trying to learn multiple languages at once can actually end in disaster. You can very easily get muddled up and confused between the languages. You might start mixing words up, or using grammar rules from one language with another.

Trying to multi task in this way can actually slow you down. You are much better to learn one language at a time. It can seem like it is slower, since you are only focusing on one. However, once you have this language to a good level it is easier to maintain it and then move on to the next language and start trying to learn it from zero.

(You can read more information about Learning Two Languages At The Same Time)

Reaching A Plateau In Language Learning

As you progress and learn more languages, you may find you get faster and faster at learning them.

However, at some point you are going to reach a plateau. Trying to manage your daily life, language learning and language maintenance is just going to become too much.

You will reach a point where you either need to stop learning new languages, or stop maintaining old ones you have already acquired.

This is your limit and it is not going to be the same for everyone. We all have 24 hours a day, but we all have different lives, with different past experiences and different things that we need to use our brain power on. So how many languages we can learn will really differ between us all.

(You can read more about How Many Languages Do You Need To Speak To Be A Polyglot?)

What Is A Realistic Limit Number Of Languages You Can Learn?

When we look at polyglots, who really push the limits of language learning, we can start get an idea of what a realistic limit looks like.

Some polyglots will tell you they have learned 14 languages or other impressively large numbers, but when you push them, they really only have about 5 or 6 languages to a very good standard.

I don’t want to take anything away from them, as this is a great achievement, but this seems to be the rough number that they can keep and maintain to a good level.

They find that they can learn more, but then they have to stop focusing on maintaining the other languages. They may also be learning more languages, but the level that these languages are at are quite basic and slow, as they still have to spend a lot of time maintaining their other languages.

When you ask them why they think it is around this number, it seems to be the amount they are able to use almost daily. Not only are they maintaining these languages, but they actually have a functionally use in their lives. It’s like I said near the start, you need to use it or lose it and although they may have learned many more languages, as they are not using them as much, they are losing them.

This 5 or 6 number seems to be the point where everything can remain balanced and not be too overwhelming.

(You can read more about a common question that is asked of polyglots – Is It Possible To Speak 10 Languages?)

Conclusion

Learning 5 or 6 languages out of 7000 may not seem that impressive, but it really is. Many of us will not get anywhere near this level but it is certainly obtainable if we put enough time and effort into studying.

It may take many years but it can be done. There is also nothing stopping us from learning more, but to a lower standard and likewise, there is nothing from stopping us learning a smaller number, but to a really high level.   

I would not worry about the limits and I would just focus on learning a language that you are going to use in your daily life and be able to enjoy the benefits of this.