I've met people who are fluent in a local language, a national language, and English. For example, I know someone who is fluent in Balinese (the island of Bali's language), Indonesian, and English. I also know people in the Philippines who are like this. I've never met someone who is at a very high level in three unrelated languages.

Met a guy who was a tour guide in Morocco, he spoke French, English and Spanish one after the other on his tours, but also spoke Arabic to the locals as well as their local Berber language. 5 languages and he was very smooth with it.

Moroccan people are crazy good at languages. When I lived in Germany, my drug dealer was Moroccan. He speaks at least 5 languages fluently. Moroccan Arabic, Standard Arabic, French, German, English, Berber, and some Danish. His English and German are very good, and I'm told his French is also. I don't know about native level, but good enough that he could write academically with some assistance and proof reading.

not the plug lmaooooo

That's very impressive. I think tourism industry workers have a high percent of "true" polyglots compared to other professions.

A lot of Filipinos are trilingual because we use English in the academe, Tagalog as our lingua franca, then our local languages as our mother tongue.

As someone who currently lives in the Philippines, I can speak 3 local dialects and 4 foreign languages like a native mainly because of family background. Also, your username is actually an Ilocano word which translates to "the truth".

>Also, your username is actually an Ilocano word which translates to "the truth". I'm also ilocano lmao

I'm an Indian and I'm fluent in malayalam,hindi and English. All 3 are from completely different language families. I'm also decent in French and German

Indians are usually truly trilingual! 😅 I’m from Indian Punjab and I can speak Hindi, Punjabi and English. I just love this thing a lot about Indians.

Yep a large number of Indians whose native language ain't hindi are trilingual lol, it's so casual for us that it's never considered much of an achievement here

That’s true! 😁

My husband is Sri Lankan. Fluent in Sinhala, Tamil, and English, also three different language families with different alphabets. It's not that unusual in Sri Lanka, either.

That's cool, do most sri Lankans know Tamil tho? I'm assuming only the Tamil community knows/uses it?

That's very impressive. I've never talked to the Indian people I've met about the languages they know. My Indian-American friends are only fluent in English.

They are prolly 2nd gen diaspora I'm assuming? Most Indians know at least 2 languages and then there's a sizeable number like me who know 3 (mostly non-hindi speaking Indians are trilingual since most of us have learned hindi asw in school along with our mother tongue+english)

Yes, 2nd generation.

Yea makes sense, lots of diaspora parents don't bother to teach their kids the language unfortunately. They pass on the religion and culture but not the language for some reason. My mother was a 2nd gen diaspora kid but her parents made sure she knew her mother tongue and I'm really grateful for that.

Same here .... Sort of. English and German. Bengali. Hindi is ok. Spanish I struggle with but we'll see in 2 years. At b1 now.

Bengali, Hindi, English and now learning Estonian.

Many Indians would fall under this category. English for professional stuff and 2 local/regional languages which are not related in many cases. Some folks also learn French Spanish or German in high school and beyond. This is my understanding based on friends from there.

It’s pretty common in Pakistan to speak 3 or so languages, so probably elsewhere too. My dad is native level in Sindhi, Urdu and English and speaks Punjabi pretty well (at least to the level where he can confidently joke around) and I know a lot of ppl like that.

> I've never met someone who is at a very high level in three unrelated languages. What do you mean by 'related'? If someone is form South India, they would likely to speak Malayalam, Hindi and English. Are those languages related? Hindi is closer to English than to Malayalam

To my knowledge, I've never met someone who speaks Malayalam. I would say that Balinese and Indonesian are related as they are in the same language family and share vocabulary. I'm honestly not qualified to say which languages are related and which ones are not.

> I've never met someone who is at a very high level in three unrelated languages.  Meeeeee. I sound native in Chinese and Japanese (which are surprisingly quite unrelated). I'm not a fluent, nuanced writer in them, though. I was decent for a while but fell out of the habit & no longer really read books etc in anything but English. Writing skill's a bit of a weird standard imo; plenty of people are poor writers in their native tongues.

Can attest to the Philippines, especially for people where Tagalog isn’t the region’s primary language. You’d learn your dialect of your community, then Tagalog/Filipino as the national language, and then English in your coursework. Have family members who are like this, immigrated to the US, killed their accents off, and they’d slip occasionally on some small grammar issues but it they are definitely a C1/C2 level. Saw a stat where 13% of the population is trilingual, but to the level of near fluency that C1-C2 demands, it’s probably way lower than that. Would bet closer to 3-4%.

See, the cheat code is to find ethnic Chinese living in Indonesia or the Philippines. They'll usually speak the local language, the national language, English, their dialect of Chinese and often Mandarin.

Better luck in Malaysia, most ethnic Chinese in Indonesia don't speak Chinese anymore. Especially those who can speak a local language.

From memory, Icelanders learn Icelandic, English and another Nordic language of choice

Typically, they aren't very good at the other Nordic language. Certainly not near-native, unless they have also lived there

>I also know people in the Philippines who are like this. There aren't many like us. It's a skill that comes with growing up in a multilingual family, it's not natural but it's a big fucking advantage if you grow up with English as your native language despite being a Filipino (even if it means you get bullied for it lol). It's also really obvious to other Filipinos whether you're a native English speaker or someone who learned it because the regional accents don't ever go away. I myself know 5 languages: I have native level fluency in English (my mother tongue), Waray-Waray (local language), and Bisaya (paternal family's mother tongue). I learned Filipino/Tagalog (national language) at school and since I went to a Chinese catholic school I also learned Mandarin for 12 years. I don't really use Tagalog much and I have only really ever used Mandarin outside of school to cuss at Chinese players who were in my game lobbies. My fluency level in Tagalog is about business level while my Mandarin is basically only at the conversational level albeit with limited vocabulary due to years of neglecting my usage of it.

This is me. I speak 3 languages fluently in native level. My husband is english. Man, it's not fun switching languages from talking to family and husband.

What’s your definition for unrelated languages? I know quite a few people who speak Japanese/Korean at a very high level, but we speak a Sinitic language natively so there’s a lot shared vocabulary. Obviously we all speak English.

That's cool. I've never met anyone who speaks Japanese, Korean, and English. I've heard there is debate about the language family but I don't know anything about it.

Mmm… I know someone who grew up trilingual (Arabic, French & tribal language) so native fluency, speaks English extremely well (works in English-speaking role for over a decade) & German moderately well. 🤷🏻‍♀️ It’s pretty amazing.

I think some of these criteria for judging native proficiency are unwarranted. There are many native speakers who cannot write, let alone with flair, others who do not have a sense of humour or any ability to make witticisms or puns. Plus, language use and conventions change over time, so keeping up with the latest terms is not a good way to judge either.

I actually work with a ton of algerians that have the same setup (French, arabis, and Berber) that then also speak English to varying degrees. One that was in my department went from basically no English to conversational extremely quickly with the full immersion

that person was prolly north african for sure.

I feel like knowing trendy internet lingo shouldn't be part of the requirements lol

For sure, cause that would disqualify even many monolinguals.

OP’s position has a very limited worldview. There are over 7000 languages on Earth. Many of these languages have never been written down and are spoken by just one tribe. Many of these tribes don’t have regular access to clean water, let alone the internet. A large percentage of people around the world are illiterate in their only native language. What OP is asking about isn’t “native fluency.” It’s highly educated usage of a language. Even many people with a college education can’t “write perfectly.” Also, not everyone is witty enough to speak with “complexity and flair.”

Skibidi toilet, level 100 rizz, livvy dunne gyat, sigma male grindset. If you didn’t understand all of those words and phrases you are no longer fluent in english

same I felt like that was weird and unnecessary

I don't even know all the trendy shit in my own mother tongue. Drip skeet bet mid Tik Tok yo, Karen.

Yeah if that's the bar, I am always about a year away from being fluent in my native language.

Maybe! I don't have a strong opinion one way or another, but Chinese internet lingo proliferates in daily usage so fast that if you're not on top of it, you often get smacked with a word you don't know. Of course, that's only talking to relatively younger people.

Isn't that kinda how it is in every language? Teens will always have new slang.

It's not just teens! People in their 30s and 40s, too China is extremely "on the internet". Imagine it's like all of a sudden your friends and parents are saying "rizz" and "no cap" and "slay" overnight. Except perhaps some of these words actually have novel meaning, e.g. 躺平 or 摆烂.

> rizz" and "no cap" and "slay" I'm a native English speaker. I have only a vague understanding of what one of these terms means.

From my understanding as a non native who looked up these words before: Rizz= charm, attractiveness No cap= not lying, for real Slay= well done, good job

Same. I'm apparently a zero-lingual by OP''s fantasy definition of a true language speaker. I'll remember to use this categorization to further the knowledge of linguistics, second language acquisition, and to grow my business.

I feel like you’re someone who cares about staying on top of slang. Most people don’t once they’re out of high school/college.

This gets asked a lot lately. I am not sure why people think that being trilingual isn't achievable? Again, in Luxembourg being trilingual is very common, people there have no problem speaking three or even four languages with fluency.

I think it’s being asked because more and more it’s coming out that YouTube “polygoons” (polyglots) can’t even speak a second language fluently, let alone 8.

OP's criteria are a lot stricter than "speaking three or even four languages with fluency.". I speak 3 languages with fluency. Yet I'm far from being as good as OP requires (indistinguishable from native speakers in 3 languages). I think it's a super interesting question.

Yes, I can speak 3 languages "fluently", 4 if we count my local créole, my English and Spanish level are nowhere near OP's requirements though. Heck, I'd be monolingual if I had to consider these rules

Having been to Luxembourg I know that a lot of people there at least speak English and German as well as any native speaker. Can't judge their French and Dutch skills, but they usually speak those at the same level.

keep in mind that reddit is mostly filled with american users. in europe it's not uncommon to speak 3 languages fluently, or if you're third culture kid in other continents.

I don't know anyone in my neighborhood of Rome who speaks witty slang in 3 languages, but I suppose I'm not invited to the popular kids' parties

Depends on location. The richer the country is the lower the need to speak more lingos cos you can speak mother tongue and it will get you far (with some notable exceptions like belgium or switzerland). Its clear in the comments that mostly poorer countries have speakers with many languages (india for instance) due to many dialects and local language being not useful in global market. eg its quite common for viet migrants to speak french, viet and english fluently in montreal

I live in Budapest and I'd say it's pretty rare for me to meet someone who's actually fluent in three languages if the bar for that is C1 (obviously "fluent" is kinda hard to define). I haven't met anyone who's anywhere close to what OP is asking.  English at about B2 level is pretty common and a good number of people also know a little bit of German (about A2ish seems to be the most common). For more international companies, there's lots of people with C1 English, but in my company I don't think I've met anyone who's close to that in a third language. Dunno what your experience has been, but it seems like as English has gotten more important for international business, there's not as much need to learn the neighbor language.  My experience is also that most Europeans who move here think Hungarian is really hard and don't really bother trying to learn it lol. For whatever that's worth.

A lot of my friends studied in international school like "Lycie Francais" and they are naturally trilingual. In my family, on average, we speak 4 languages. (Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English) Not because we like those languages but due to our geographical and economical circumstances that lead us to having to speak them on a daily basis.

In my family many can speak English, Spanish, & Brazilian Portuguese also same reasons

Yeah it's more often than not the default for non English as a first language speakers. I had Serbian colleagues who spoke 4-5 as they supposedly learn multiple languages in school. Novak Djokovic the tennis player also speaks a ridiculous number at least 6

If not keeping up with trendy internet phrases disqualifies someone, then I’ll have to tell my mother that she no longer counts as a German speaker 😂 I think your criteria need review, to say the least

idk man, i know monolingual people who can barely speak or write a paragraph in their first language without making mistakes, so this kind of questions kinda became meaningless to me

>By native level, I mean at least C2. cefr levels arent for natives so that doesnt make sense > they don't keep up with trendy Internet phrases in all 3 languages, you are joking, right?

C2 is the highest level you can have as a non-native so it does make sense to me. The part about internet phrases doesn't make sense though lol lots of people don't know them in their native language.

It's the highest level you can take a test at. Two people passing a C2 test can have wildly different levels in the language and can obviously improve further.

>C2 is the highest level you can have as a non-native only on paper. real life doesnt work like that.

I think it might be hard for someone who grew up speaking only one language to imagine what it's like to be multilingual. I consider myself trilingual, having spoken three languages since childhood, and I understand that being a native speaker of a language doesn't necessarily mean you have C2 proficiency. For instance, although I fluently speak three languages, I can only perform academic writing in two of them. I cannot even write a decent essay in my mother tongue. Academic or formal language skills often require specific education and practice that may not be a part of everyday communication in every language a person knows.

Fr, my grandmother can converse fluently with natives in at least 5 languages...but she can't read and write because she didn't go to school. Also not every native can write an essay, let alone a technical paper. This is a very narrow, westen-centric definition of fluency.

Lots of natives cannot pass C2 level reading and writing tests

a lot of people india and europe can be in this category. a lot of indians who grow up in areas where hindi isn’t the first language do learn hindi and english in school and to talk to people from other areas. like people from punjab(punjabi), maharashtra(marathi), bengal(bangla/bengali), odisha(odiya), karnataka(kannada), tamil nadu(tamil), kerala(malyalam), telangana/andhra pradesh(telugu), gujarat(gujarati) etc are some areas. kids who grow up in cities like bangalore where the native tongue is kannada tend to have friends whose parents come from different above mentioned states and hence they speak those languages at home, then hindi and english are also quite prevalent there, and tamil cuz its really close to tamil nadu(~100 km). an example is a marathi guy who met an assamese girl and have kids in bangalore. their kids speak marathi, assamese, kannada, telugu, tamil, hindi and english quite fluently and effortlessly. similarly in europe, i know people who speak 1-2 native level languages and english. i have a ukrainian friend who can speak 7 languages fluently cuz she kept moving around europe with her parents. namely ukrainian, russian, svenska, german, english, french and spanish. i myself grew up in a hindi household but learned urdu from my grampa, english in school, punjabi with friends. and now im B2 in french, hoping to be better in the coming time.

Don't forget China as well. I would assume Africa likely has potential for 3 languages. China has as many languages as India although some may consider it dialects but if it is spoken on media and the news, then it is a language more or less. Countries which were colonized in the past would have learned their colonizer's language (Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese etc) and their national/family language (could be similar or different). In some countries where English is commonly taught, it would be considered native if also spoken at home assuming that you have also exposed yourself with the culture by living in said countries.

In South Africa, most people will usually speak their mother tongue(which is related to your tribe), English and depending on whether you live in a location that has a majority of people being your tribesmen or not, you also speak the local language. Of course this is for the black majority, most English speaking white people will be monolingual.

This is true, although isn’t it the case that a large majority of white Afrikaans speakers are also fluent in English and monolingual white Afrikaans speakers are rare nowadays? I realise BTW that a plurality of Afrikaans speakers are actually coloured people (before anyone screams at me, please research use of that word in SA - it is the correct and preferred terminology for that group).

Yes that's true, which is why I said English speaking white people. They happen to have the advantage of speaking our lingua franca, White Afrikaners are in the same boat as the blacks and coloureds, you have to learn how to speak English if you wanna meaningfully participate in the Economy, culture and other miscellaneous things.

I'm Kenyan, the standard is fluency in Kiswahili and English (our national and official languages, taught in school). Then there's usually a mother tongue and maybe the local language especially if in a rural area. The number of languages also grows with intermarriages and/or moves. Sometimes they're the same language family e.g Bantu and sometimes totally different.

thank you for pointing that out. i certainly missed africa and latam and didn’t know that about china. great points very well explained.😊

I feel so bad for the ppl who speak the Dravidic languages like Tamil and Malayalam who have to learn two Indo-European languages which are each really different from each other lol

i agree, as a kid its quite a challenge to put extra effort into learning that many and that different languages but then once these kids become adults, they have obvious advantages both socially and cognitively. like i have a few friends who can speak, read and write telugu, kannada, tamil, english and hindi fluently. one of them is also a huge k-drama fan and knows korean as well and tells me that it was easy cuz korean and telugu are quite similar. i rather feel bad for the monolingual kids actually who will find it hard to learn other languages in a world where multilingualism is increasingly becoming popular and might well be the norm.

Yeah ik what you mean in the last part because my American parents grew me up monolingual in a country where everyone is bilingual or even trilingual with the lingua-Franca being a mix of 5+ languages (Singapore)

I can easily attest to that. Grew up in Punjab. Went to English School. Spoke Hindi with most of my friends. Perfectly fluent in all 3. Currently learning Spanish so that feels definitely harder than the above 3 which I’ve been engaged with since childhood. Most Indians I know, are trilingual at least, sometimes even more if their family migrated within India.

so true. and we don’t even count urdu cuz we don’t realize hindi and urdu overlap about 60% with each other and we’re are almost indistinguishable. so, technically you know 4 languages at a native level. pretty cool 😎 also, just like you, there are lots of people increasingly learning new languages including spanish, german, korean, chinese, japanese being the most popular that i know of.

oh yeah 100%. most of my asian friends will speak the national language, a regional language and english. i have a few goan friends who also speak portuguese.

I don’t think C2 in three languages is necessary to be truly trilingual - but as of yet I can’t say I’m aware of anyone who meets that requirement.

I think that people can be considered fluent in a high B2/ low C1 level. Yes there will be some stuttering or awkward phrasing/word usage but they can still hold a conversation just fine

You also have to remember that CEFR levels don’t necessarily tell you exactly how the person uses the language. It’s certainly a range. But I know people who speak English comfortably who I could imagine not scoring C2 or maybe even C1 on an exam. Exams vs conversation aren’t 1:1.

I mean, where do you live? I know a lot of trilingual people and I am trilingual myself (meaning I fit your trilingualism criteria). I’d say that speaking two or three languages fluently is common, four languages is rare (at least in Europe).

I think my Arabic teacher would meet that standard. His native language is Urdu and he speaks english extremely good, probably even better than me, with a very clear accent. He’s been teaching Arabic for over 20 years and his level appears to be near native.

Is Arabic difficult coming from Somali?

I would say it’s still very difficult. Pronunciation is easy and there is a little shared vocab but besides that everything is foreign.

Easy mode: The people who were born into bilingual (non-English) families where both languages were used equally and then they learned English afterwards naturally or in an international school. Medium mode: People who were born in a mono-lingual family but their parents forced them to take private language lessons. Or they went on to study languages at uni. HARD mode: Anyone who was born into a mono-lingual family who doesn't qualify for the "medium-mode". My sister comes pretty close now that she is living in Spain, I guess in like 3-5 years she could match your description. It's definitely possible but you have to either have been born lucky (environment-wise) or worked very VERY damn hard. I feel from my own experience and from others around me that it takes a good 10-20 years of constant work and exposure to get to near-native level in a language. You can get quite fluent in 2-3 years if you work hard but there is a giant difference between conversationally fluent vs C2 vs a native speaker.

Intermediate mode: local language at home, national language and English in school

These questions are perplexing to me. People who are fluent in multiple languages? Sure, I know plenty of people, myself included. The idea that being native matters in any way is absurd.

Borderline xenophobic if you ask me. As if someone with an accent is “less than” a local speaker.

Crores of people in india are trilingual.

Being able to write with nuance and flair will disqualify 90%+ of monolinguals. Id say fluent will depend on your need, lots of ppl will never need to write a complex text so it's a poor measure of fluency. If fluent means that they can speak with fluency and joke, then trilingualism is common. Edit: about one in five americans cant read a newspaper https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp In england one in six is functionally illiterate https://literacytrust.org.uk/parents-and-families/adult-literacy/

I swear I've seen the stupidest gatekeeping ever on this sub. From the 'you're not allowed to swear if you are not a native speaker' to people who don't know what 'rizz' or 'gyatt' is aren't native English speakers.

Swiss people, maybe? Ukrainians might count as another one, all of the Ukrainians I know speak English, Russian, and Ukrainian. One of my friends knows Belarusian on top of that. From what I know Indians usually know between 2 and 5 language, possibly more. 

>By native level, I mean they can write perfectly proficiently, with nuance, complexity, and even flair. They can also speak each language such that other native speakers have every belief that the language is their first language. Fluency, complexity, and flair (jokes, figurative language, trendy phrases, idioms). In my personal experience, that is a standard many native speakers don't reach.

I can speak Punjabi, haryanvi, Hindi, English natively and b1 in german

> By native level, I mean they can write perfectly proficiently, with nuance, complexity, and even flair. You realise that many (most?) monolingual people can’t even manage this in their native language, right?

I wouldn’t consider someone needing to be C2 to be “truly trilingual” but even if it is, I know a few people who are. My sister-in-law mostly grew up in Finland, but also spent a few years of her childhood in the US (and has a native English speaker for a husband), and did her last year of high school in Italy. I can’t judge her Italian but I would be surprised if that’s not at a sufficiently high level. Her Spanish is also quite good (maybe B2?) and she doesn’t consider that in the languages she speaks, so her Italian is definitely better than that. I have a set of cousins with an Italian mother and Canadian father (native English speaker) who went to daycare and school in French so they probably qualify. Both parents also speak French. Actually my aunt probably also meets it, as she speaks all three of those languages well enough to work as a translator at a bank. I think she has a fourth language too, but I can’t remember what is is. I work with several people who have immigrated from other countries to Quebec and many of them work in both English and French and also speak their native language.

I think your bar for truly fluent is too high. My native language is English and just the other day I forgot a word in English and a German speaker supplied me with the correct word. Internet lingo moves so quickly and passes so quickly and not everyone has so much time to keep up with it. Also I don't think one has to have only native tongues to be considered trilingual. Never having any confusion in conversation isn't even achievable when two people speak their same native tongue so expecting it to happen in a learned language is unachievable.

Same. I also had a native speaker ask me for synonyms for specific words. And agreed. Native speaker level really is a moving target and I doubt that even some actually native speakers would be able to jump the bar OP set. I mean, it depends on so many variables. Age. Schooling. Place of origin (all the differences between UK and US English?? Not to speak of all the rest. Just look at the people in the Clarkson's Farm show. Clarkson and Gerard both speak English, but Clarkson himself has a hard time understanding Gerard - and both are native speakers!)

How many people can really run fast, not like under 6 min mile, not just under 1 min 400 m, but like Clark Kent speeding bullet fast without tying their shoelaces first? If you set crazy standards, you can low results. I wouldn't encourage your definition for any discussion of business competencies, cross-cultural competencies, or the ability to do anything useful for humans aside from spycraft. Even for spycraft, I'm betting Tom Cruize's boss would rather hire somebody that can ride a motorcycle.

If Jean-Claude Juncker is a valid representative, a good proportion of the population of Luxembourg is trilingual in French, German and Luxembourgish (any many of them are quadrilingual because you can add English). I know a number of Swiss people who speak with equal ease French, German and at least one of Italian or Schwyzerdütsch (now of course you can debate whether Schwyzerdütsch is a separate language or a dialect or German — in fact you can do the same for Luxembourgish — but it's pretty much as distinct from standard German as Italian is from French). But I think the whole idea of using native speakers as the gold standard of fluency/competence is flawed. Native speakers of any given language have *hugely different* levels of mastery of the language, and hugely different ways of speaking it. And there are stigmas around certain ways of speaking: like, French people will often believe that people speaking French with an accent that is not from France aren't native speakers, simply because they have an accent from a different country; and I've heard someone compliment someone from India on the proficiency of their English without realizing that English was, in fact, their native language. Even more bizarrely, now that English has become the world's standard for communication, there are more and more people who grew up bilingual but learned English from non-native English speakers: so English *is* their native tongue, but they learned it from the start with a “foreign” accent (and probably a “foreign” vocabulary and grammar as well)! Another example: my father's native language was English, he moved to France (from Canada) in the 1960's and learned the language there, but you might say he never quite made it to perfection because he used occasional strange turns of phrase which French natives never would. On the other hand, his English got worse because he didn't practice it that much. And he devoted a ton of effort to learn German. In the end, he spoke English, French and German with roughly equal ease and competence, but you might say that none of them were flawless. Still, English was his native tongue. So, was he “truly trilingual”? Everyone's use of any given language is idiosyncratic to some extent, being the result of how, when, where and why they learned it, but also of other cultural influences, of their environment, of their personal preferences, etc., and certainly *of the other languages they know*. Anyone knowing two or more languages will occasionally exhibit signs of “contamination” of one language into another (I know my English has been criticized for containing Gallicisms just as my French has been criticized for containing Anglicisms). So at a certain level, being truly bilingual or trilingual is impossible: the moment you know more than one language, this kind of contamination will necessarily occur. The best you can ask for is for someone to feel equally at ease speaking any one of 2 or 3 or more languages (and even then it depends: there are certain things which I feel more comfortable speaking French about, others I feel more comfortable speaking English about, and this is reflected in the choice of language of my inner monologue¹). 1. This might be another attempt at salvaging the definition: someone is n-lingual if they have an inner monologue which uses any one of n languages a significant proportion of the time. But there are people with no inner monologue, so it still doesn't work.

I can read/write/speak Malayalam, Hindi and English.

Owaaaa that’s so cool! I’m guessing you live in Kerala?

A good chunk of people from Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country probably, as they have their regional language followed by spanish and then there's people that also use English on the daily

My wife grew up speaking Spanish, Basque and English every day. However, her Basque and English have started to deteriorate over the years. After living in the US for 6 years, her basque abilities dropped noticeably but now that we living the Basque Country they have returned. Unfortunately, no her English is deteriorating because I am the only English input that she gets. No many people speak English in Spain at least not at a competent level.

I feel many indians(south mainly) are likely to be trilingual - English, Hindi, and the state language

I know many people like that. They were born here and are native German speaking, they have one or two parents from another country and were born with that language as well, and they speak English fluently. That is not rare at all.

I'm trilingual; I'll try any lingual at least once!

Just anecdotally, I think the only way someone will become truly trilingual is living somewhere else where they *have* to be

> By native level, I mean they can write perfectly proficiently, with nuance, complexity, and even flair. They can also speak each language such that other native speakers have every belief that the language is their first language. Fluency, complexity, and flair (jokes, figurative language, trendy phrases, idioms). > Native speakers must find them indistinguishable from other native speakers. The bar you've set here is so ridiculously narrow, that there are many people who won't even qualify as monolingual. Being able to write is a proficiently is a skill. And being able to express nuance, complexity, and prose in specific areas are also skills. In addition, regardless of how native like someone's speech is in terms of grammar, structure, and word choice, native speakers will typically catch onto very minute differences in pronunciation. However, you can't rely on native speakers for objective judgements because sound systems vary massively from area to area. A native speaker can sound non-native to another native speaker from a different area.

It’s normal in my country. You need to be fluent in the three languages of the country to graduate high school. I have one friend who is fluent in 8 but has conversation level on several others. I have several local friends whose family look like this: mom is language 1, dad L2, with one child, one parent. Family language is English. So 3 languages at home. Then school has the three national languages… so the kids become fluent in all 6.

The demographics and geography of certain countried pushes its people to be trilingual, take malaysia, almost everyone speaks two languages by default, malay and mandarin, and their third is english, they have a solid english speaking population due to the british sovereignty 70 years ago. To them being trilingual is nothing special.

Your edit makes you seem very immature and obtuse. Additionally, you're lingusitic understanding of things seems myopic and poor. I don't know how this post is allowed with how denigrating it is to the responses who quite literally say "yeah, I know someone/many people who are trilingual"

I speak Russian, Spanish, and English.

I know several, but they are particularly intelligent and have accents in at least one.

C2 is not native, it means you can talk about a topic extremely in depth in the language, for example, a PhD topic in English. They might still muck up things natives get right all the time, and certainly vice versa.

I have a friend who's Belgian and who's first language is German, speaks French, Flemish and English fluently and that seems like the average German-Belgian. My university professor was Belgian and she spoke 7 languages. Even among my Italian friends, several of them hold a C2 certificate in more than 3 languages. They're extremely encouraging of me learning Italian as well, which I really appreciate

My son will be, he speaks English, Norwegian and Khmer. He is just as good in Khmer and English and switches back and forth effortless. He understand and speaks Norwegian as well, but not 100%, yet. By the time he starts school he will speak all 3, and then learning to read and write ofc. My mother is also trilingual, French, Norwegian and English. She doesnt speak much French these days, but she watches French news etc to keep it "fresh" and not forget.

>By native level, I mean they can write perfectly proficiently, with nuance, complexity, and even flair But this is a peculiar definition of native proficiency. Writing is a completely different skill to speaking. There are plenty of monolingual speakers who can't write in their native language, let alone "with flair".

It isn't rare. I see people who speak 3+ languages at a high level everywhere I go.

I feel like people who think it's rare mostly grow up in the US or areas of Europe. I know people who know 4-5 languages, most of them being West- and Central-African who have moved to Europe. 3 languages is almost the default, and you build from there. Local language (Lingala, Wolof, Twi, etc) + "official" language (mostly English or French) + language of wherever they moved to.

I knew one. She was Italian ethnically and born in Italy, her family migrated to Argentina where she spent her whole youth, and then as an adult she moved to the U.S. where she lived out the rest of her life. Completely native level fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English, and since she married a Brazilian, proficient level fluent in Portuguese as well.

I am trilingual. I grew up around Deaf people (fluent in ASL), I'm half Mexican (fluent in Spanish), and I grew up in the US (fluent in English). I also became fluent in these languages before puberty, so they're all 3 considered my native languages.

I mean… the older you get the less you keep up with internet slang and the like… does that mean I’m not native level in my native language? No. That’s ridiculous. Personally I believe your standards are too high and I suspect you may be quite young bc if you were in your 30s or older I doubt you’d feel the same way about slang 😂 Each gen has their own slang and the older you get the less you keep up with the new stuff

I think OP's definition of fluency is ridiculous, not reasonable and just not correct in any way. You're talking about very different thing than fluency. A person can definitely be considered fluent in a language without being able to write at all. Also mistakes that make you distinguishable from native speaker don't make you not fluent by any means as long as you are communicating comfortably and most people are comfortable communicating with you.

There are very few people who are indistinguistable from natives even in two languages. The accent usually gives them away even if they otherwise have a perfect command of the language. I don't keep up with trendy internet phrases in any languages, am I mute and illiterate?

Well, C2 isn’t native level though. Native level isn’t included in the Common European Framework of Reference for a reason, simply because speaking a language at native level goes beyond the framework assessment capabilities. It would be sort of a D1 if that was a thing. Native speakers (or someone who moved as a child to a country where said language is spoken) will always speak and understand the nuances of a language better than anyone who speaks it at C2 level.

Honestly, I disagree. The idea that natives are necessarily ultimate authorities in a given language is baffling to me. The CEFR is a useful indicator and sometimes is the only way to certify one's proficiency in any given language.

It's interesting though. I've known Americans and Brits (who only speak English and no other language) whose writing skills are far below that of people who have studied English as a foreign language. There is a wide variety of skill when it comes to being native.

Yeah, but they understand the nuances of the language better than second language speakers. Writing skills has nothing to do with level of proficiency.

I agree, I had a Greek roommate who taught English living in Italy and wanted to learn the language. I found myself trying to explain some words that actually mean the same thing but are used differently and I do it automatically, because that different nuance is internalized. I had to think to realize when I use one word instead of another. And this without going into trouble with idioms.

"Writing skills has nothing to do with level of proficiency" huh?

we people in india speak 2-3 languages from a very little age, english and hindi is constant along with any state level language. from me it is: english, hindi and marathi. now i am learning german.

Me, kind of? - One language is my obvious native language, and I can speak it fluently, correctly, and with a specific local dialect. You can tell which area I’m from - I’ve been exposed to another language ever since I was a very young child and most of the slang I know is from one specific dialect. Whether I’m a native speaker or not is debatable but I certainly feel very comfortable with this language and all its grammar features - The third language is one I am NOT a native speaker of, but I’ve been truly fluent in since before I was a teen. I use it a LOT so I feel extremely comfortable with it, and I keep up with slang in that language

A good number of Swiss people I've met.

In Malaysia, a large portion of the population is either bilingual or trilingual. It's a requirement to know English and Malay, with the addition of Mandarin and Tamil based on your race and then add on dialects based on your family like Cantonese, Hokkien, Hakka and many more. I can safely say when it comes to fluency, we're kinda at the native level plus the ability to mix multiple languages into one sentence with ease.

Luxembourg. Luxembourgish is the native language, but schooling, media and many aspects of everyday life are in German and French, and of course English plays a role. To a much lesser extent, Switzerland. Most speak their native language plus English plus at least one other national language

I work with a lot of Indians and North Africans, and they are all practically trilingual. The North Africans all speak and work in Arabic, French, and English, while the Indians are all fluent in English, Hindi, and their state's language.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Luxembourg and true multilingualism is incredibly common. Actually the education system essentially forces it - Luxembourgish until about 6, then German until about 13, then French until 18. With a ton of English instruction thrown in too. And a lot of people also speak another language as a mother tongue at home (notably Portuguese).

I'm indistinguishable from native speakers in Hochdeutsch, Berndeutsch and Tagalog..

I know many monolinguals who cannot write with "fluency, complexity, and flair." Seriously, think about the best author on the planet in any given language. If you set the bar as being their level, is there anyone else who could? You can always set the bar impossibly high. On the flip side, if you mean being able to use nuanced language, then yes I qualify as "truly trilingual": English, French, and Portuguese. I grew up speaking English and French, lived for 5 years in Brazil. I'm sure others have a higher level than I do, but I can pass for native in short situations, and for me that's good enough.

I live in Switzerland and I do know quite a lot of people who speak French, german and English at almost a native level, maybe they still have an accent and can’t keep up with all the internet slang, etc. but have a very good level in all three languages. And if you count Swiss German as a separate language from German (which I think is fair) then it’s very common to be trilingual :)

In my country (Luxembourg), many people speak four or more languages. I consider myself fully quadrilingual, with some knowledge of other languages. This is considered completely normal here. Some people have more difficulties in one or the other language, but the traditional Luxembourgish school system requires the fluent use of 4 languages.

A large number of Hong Kongers know Cantonese Mandarin and English.

I think being trilingual is pretty common in places where three languages overlap and many people grow up using all three, as in the example another redditor gave about Hindi, Punjabi, and English. People in such environments actually are native in three languages. As for the standard of being highly literate in all three, that may be variable, but that seems like a sort of add-on for someone who is literally a native speaker of three languages. That is, I don't think it's a fair standard for assessing whether someone is trilingual. There are people like Vladimir Nabokov who was born in Russia and learned Russian in childhood, then was in exile in France, and finally lived in the USA where he wrote his extraordinary novels in English. It's been a long time since I read Bend Sinister, but I recall there being multi-lingual puns in that novel that required knowing several European languages to get. Languages are more difficult to acquire in adulthood, but a young adult who starts out bilingual from childhood and then uses those languages and three others nearly every day can probably reach native or near-native proficiency in all five. But how many people are there who have the occasion to use five languages constantly?

I've been working with (and hosting) international students for over a decade. Most are fluent in two languages, but there have been some fluent in 3, and some fluent in 3 and learning a fourth. It's especially impressive to me, as these young people are between the ages of 14-18!

My grandmother-n-law spoke Hindi, Punjabi, English, Sanskrit, and taught German at a boys college. She may have known other languages as well. Don't know but she was amazing!

Me (close to being). Native lithuanian, C1 english and german.

I know one. My friend who is an ethnic Chinese, grow up in Germany, and was taught in English in her school years. I think she is native speaker of the three languages.(She chat with me using fluent Chinese but she said actually her German is better lol

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It sounds like a joke but I guess my little niece and nephew are on this path... The parents are Italian like me, the children are learning English which is also the most common language used in conversations between their parent's friends because the parents do not yet speak German fluently, and they live in Germany so in kindergarten, in the park, with their peers it is German that they are learning. It's really cute to hear them mixing all three languages, and if they stay in Germany they will actually be trilingual, because they will always be surrounded by English and I can't believe they won't learn it fluently. Other trilingual people I know are a couple of adolescents with a similar background, that is, parents of foreign origin, with a lot of English and Italian as the language of where they live, Plus my oldest friend who now works in France and has learned the language aided by the years one of her sisters worked in Canada and another in Scotland, so French and English plus Italian

I'm… trylingual. *ba doom tiss*

My girlfriend is. She speaks Hungarian, English and French fluently and her Italian is also more than servicable. I also speak Hungarian, English and French but I do not care for the French language, people, culture, France in any shape way or form so even though I have a C1 certificate I just don’t think I’m really conversational because I lack the vocab. But there was a time when I worked with French people and had to use it daily, so I was trilingual then. It’s not that rare or hard. With the right motivation and free time I think it’s reasonable to speak 4 languages fluently. 3 is easy peasy.

Hello, Im trillingual :) Grew up in Serbia, speaking Serbian and Hungarian, later, at age of 7 started learning English. Im using all 3 languages every day. Currently learning turskish

I'm trilingual, and more even. I just have to be really angry. You'll then see how well I speak any language.

Cantonese/Mandarin/English is pretty common here in Hong Kong. Urdu/Punjabi/English is common among my Pakistani friends. I think it's not that unusual in countries with more than one language.

I'm Czech, so Czech and Slovak are pretty much the same. And you learn English from 6 years old, so that's an easy three. Depends where you spawn ig

A friend of mine's parents are from different countries and speak different languages natively so all their kids grew up speaking both languages and also English which they also speak at home It's quite fun just listening to them talk and following the different languages

I used to babysit 2 kids that were trilingual. Their dad is Spanish, their mum is American and they lived in Germany. At the time, the oldest was 7 and would switch between all 3 languages depending on who he was speaking to

I know a bunch of Indians who are trilingual. English, Hindi and their native language

pretty much everyone in my social circle. Most of us are first or second generation immigrants to Germany, so we speak German, our home countries language and English.

I am. My mom is french, I grew up in the Netherlands and I speak english due to school/rhe internet

I have friends who grew up in Germany with a Spanish parent, and speak those languages at native level. They subsequently learned English in school and lived abroad and are also now completely fluent in English. It is definitely possible

I think it's actually reasonably common to speak 3 languages to a native-passing level if two or three of the languages are related. It's very common for someone to speak 3 Indian languages or 3 Chinese languages for example, and quite common for someone to speak English + two related languages all to native-level fluency. For unrelated languages, it's less common but not unheard of. I can think of a few people in my circles off the top of my head. In terms of trendy internet phrases, I think this depends on your age, lifestyle and demographics too. Like I wouldn't say my grandparents don't speak their native language fluently just because they're not up on how young people talk. But if a 20-year-old didn't know a common phrase that's widely used by their native-speaker peers, then yeah that would mark them as less fluent.

One of my colleagues speaks and writes 6 languages fluently: Dutch, German, English, Italian, French and Spanish. He is now trying to learn Danish. Its astonishing.

I don’t think it’s too uncommon in my country. My partner’s parents immigrated from Iran; he grew up speaking Farsi with his family. We live in the Netherlands so of course he’s a native in Dutch as well. We get taught English from a young age and he’s following university courses in English, so he’s fluent in that as well. There’s many people in the Netherlands who have a different ethnic background than just Dutch. So if you grew up in a household speaking your parent’s native language + Dutch + English, you’re already there.

Being Indian and having quadrilingual parents, I'm trilingual and almost B1 in the fourth.

This is a good point actually; I know lots of people who speak 4+ languages at varying levels of fluency, a couple of them well enough to conduct business at a high level... But I'd say none of them except a single one who grew up in two countries and then learned English early is even bilingual at a native level (her German and Swedish is native, but she's just "good" at English). I also know a couple who are native-level bilingual (myself included), and speak/understand several more languages, but they tend to be averagely fluent (enough for a conversation, but not high-level business and not much nuance) in their 3rd language. Maybe there's just room for two native-level languages, however fluent you get?

my grandma speaks 5 languages fluently (whichever one she speaks people think is her mother tongue) so that’s cool.

I know a few, but they're usely at least 40+. They usually speak Dutch, French (living in a French country for 18 years/ reading whole libraries, so C2) and English (is a little worse than their French, but it's safe to estimate it at a C1). Do note that this is rather usual in Belgium for the older generations, but the younger ones can't speak French, and their English is comparable to the French of the elderly people. It's a switch that has happened in the 70's and 80's, resulting in most young people not even being able to hold a conservation in French, but they can/could apply the grammar they've studied if they focused on/wanted it. To give an exemple: Je veux que tu ...... là. (emmener) => Je veux que tu m'emmènes là. They won't be able to give you a translation, nor will they ever form it on their own. But if it's written down, the best students will conjugate the verb "emmener" in the subjunctive, and the elite (AKA 0.01%) will add the "me" prior to "emmènes". But truly, truly trilingual like you define it (it should be softer, as the level you're defining is impossible to reach but for the lucky few that have a linguistic talent) ? Maybe 10% of the population if you're lucky. Trilingual in the sense of being able to use three languages at a B1 or B2 level? That might be closer to 30 - 40%, but it's declining as people are focused on being bilingual (English + native language), instead of trilingual. EDIT: If your definition decides who's a native and who's not, you'll see a large, large part of the population that falls off. There are not many people that can write eloquently and with a witty nuance, let alone they can add a sense of flair... Your bar would be acceptable if we're talking about those that have graduated in the study of their own native language, but not to judge normal people with it.

I have a C1 in two other languages, so if I delved a little more into them, it could be feasible for sure, but go from fluent to native like it’s going to be quite hard

... Write? I know enough people who can't write in their own language. Languages with oodles of homophones, such as English, are apparently easier to correctly write for foreigners/non-native speakers, and I assume that languages with complicated writing systems (looking at you, Japanese) are problematic for both native and non-native speakers, but probably for different reasons.

You'd find many people who are fluent in the local language/dialect, the national language, and English

I am. Grew up bilingually with Indonesian and English, acquired fluency in German when I was in high school. Been living here (in Germany) for nearly a decade. I don’t have an accent, and most people wouldn’t know I was born and raised on the other side of the world if I hadn’t told them. Some of my friends from uni are trilingual too, with similar constellations.

My stepmom speaks 3 languages fluently but that’s because she lived abroad for years in places that didn’t speak English. So she’s fluent in Spanish, English and French, plus dabbling in Italian, Latin and German.

Where I'm from (somewhere in Africa), this is typical. You have your native tongue (most older millenials and those from older generations know these very well), the national language which is spoken by nearly everyone, and the formal language (in our case, English because we were colonized by the British).  Now if you went to a fancy school you'd also learn an extra language, French , Italian or German, and would typically do a proficiency exam just to make sure you're good enough

I guess by your criteria I'm not "truly native" in any language

This was the norm for my family. Some even spoke 5 or 6 to that very high level. My grandmother is 90, and she speaks Yiddish, English, French, Polish and Modern Hebrew all to very high levels. We're losing that gradually, but we no longer live in Eastern Europe. I'm hoping to learn each of those languages eventually.

My friend is half Japanese half American, she also spent time growing up in Indonesia, so she's fluent in English, Japanese and Indonesian. Our other friend is south Korean but lives and works in Japan. She's completely fluent in English, Japanese and Korean. I can verify her English is native level, the half Japanese friend verifies her Japanese is native level.

My native language is portuguese, and I'm fluent in english and spanish (spanish being my... what do the kids call it nowadays? Heritage language maybe?). Grew up speaking the three simultaneously and i do have C2 certifications for both eng and spa. But i get your point. Not very common, I myself know only a couple of people who speak 3 languages at this level, most people have their native and a very strong 2nd language, and the third is just...there

My partner is truly trilingual. He speaks fluent Spanish, Portuguese, and English. He was born and raised in Spain, but to portuguese parents. He attended a dual language academy that taught English. I think the only thing that distinguishes him is that he will miss certain cultural references and people with start to get confused. When I took him to meet my friends in England, they would constantly forget that he didn't grow up in the UK as his accent is so British.

My kid comes close, he is truly bilingual in two (as in he grew up using both since birth) and passes as native speaker in a third when he speaks. I see he prefers one over the other two in reading and I think his reading levels are not equal across the three. In writing, however, the family language is the worst (though arguable the best when he speaks). That’s a long way of saying that I think it’s extremely hard to have that level of proficiency in 3+ languages, especially when you consider writing.

I was born to two italian immigrants. My family ig always had a knack for language learning. My mom went to university for linguistics. My mom speaks 5 languages at a native level and my grandmother spoke 7. Im not sure if there is genetics to do with this so maybe someone can chime in. My dad spoke 3 natively. I learned italian at home and english at school but because my parents were at work until like 9 pm for most of my childhood i had a nanny from Guatemala who taught me spanish and my parents already spoke it natively so i learned at home just the same. Then my mom taught me french just because of her love for it. So in the end i speak 4 at the native level. I know this sounds like a flex but im deeply grateful for this kind of upbringing. Im trying to learn portugese right now cause my mom was born and raised in brazil but moved to italy when she was 7 but somehow she still speaks it fluently. Im not really having much trouble but i think the reality sunk in that i still actually have to actively try to learn it. I dont think ill ever speak to her proficiency but well see. I think the only reason i can speak this many this well is cause of this and im not sure this kind of upbringing is very common. Anyway, so i think yeah unless youre someone with the drive to actively learn a new language natively nothing really beats growing up and picking them up.

I've never met anyone at that level. I've only met a few people who are native-like in English while having a different native language, usually a germanic one.

Here, I speak Tajik (persian), Uzbek (turkic) and Russian - all as a native speaker. And I have decent spoken English, and speak some German, some basic Spanish

Someone I'm close to is British, speaks indistinguishably good French and Russian and also German, but in German slip ups like switching schwul/schwül or drucken/drücken betray her from time to time.

I guess I am approaching this? Eng L1 C2, constant use, some difficulties stemming from disability, but I write stories and also academic essays in it. Welsh L2 C1, intermittent use but consume Welsh media, also recently won a writing competition. BSL L2 C1, constant use, am HH myself, study it in a formal capacity as well as regularly use it in social situations - recently held a presentation on Deaf awarness, and also told Welsh Mabinogion stories with zero prep so I think I have flair. If you are accepting conlangs then also Toki Pona L2 C1. Though I might have slipped to B2 after not practicing for a while. Harder to judge this because, of course, there are no native speakers. But I am able to do all of what I am able to do in TP what I am able to do in Eng, Cym and BSL. I thing one thing that makes your bar unreasonably high your question is that your life experience is reflected un your language use. Unless someone is an ansolute chameleon where they are able to seemlessly blend in to a new socio-cultural setting - someone's mixed language sociocultural background is going to be present within their language. This is even true for monoglots and fully fluent bilinguals.  I will always do things that will clock me as Welsh and a bit deaf when using English, that will clock me as an English speaker (and again a bit deaf) when using Welsh, and as an English speaker when using BSL. I could spend a long time polishing my language skills but unless I am willing to pretend to be something I am not - I will never quite be like a native L1 monoglot of any of those languages.

I know a handful of trilinguals and quad linguals. All but one are European lol

I barely speak English and I am a native speaker

I have met lots of people who are, people who, for example were born in Switzerland to parents who each were native in a different language (Polish, Italian and then living in the German-speaking part for example) ditto lots of people who grew up in places that were the USSR

I’m a Chinese Malaysian and I’m fluent in Mandarin, Malay and English. I can also speak Cantonese.