A. 59
B. 71
C. 88
D. 103
Brief Facts About Most languages mastered by one person:
Ziad Fazah, who speaks 59 different languages, is regarded as the world’s best living polyglot. He was born in Liberia, raised in Beirut, and currently resides in Brazil. He was ‘tested’ on Spanish television, however, it was unclear in some of them how effectively he could talk. But his record is nothing compared to others of the past. Born in 1774, Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti knew forty dialects and 38 languages. Al-Farabi, the Muslim polymath of the 10th century, was said to speak seventy languages. Born in 1807, the German scholar Hans Conon von der Gabelentz studied and wrote grammars for eighty different languages. However, it is most likely the record of Sir John Bowring, the 1854–1859 Governor of Hong Kong, who was reported to know 200 languages, and capable of speaking 100.