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polylingual
[ pol-ee-ling-gwuhl ]
adjective
- pertaining to, expressed in, or using several languages; multilingual.
Example Sentences
âIt was a strange thing to come to the realization of how others saw him just as a Black person versus this very well-educated polylingual scientist.â
Blonde, blue-eyed and polylingual, she caught the eye of English traveller Samuel Baker, who bought her.
Karim is only one member of X2AIâs polylingual family of chatbots.
In an essay entitled âHuge Baggy Monster: Mimetic Theories of the Indian Novel After Rushdie,â he notes that Indian hybridity need not be flagged in bright colors, and in busy polylingual prose, âwith a scattering of untranslated Indian words and phrases and odd sentence constructions.â
Jazz is a family of languages, and Mr. Dingman is polylingual.
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More About Polylingual
What doesÌępolylingual mean?
Polylingual is most commonly used to describe someone who can speak or understand multiple languages, especially someone who can speak several languages with some level of fluency.
A more commonly used synonym is multilingual. The term bilingual is commonly used to describe someone who speaks two languages, and trilingual is used to describe someone who speaks three.
Polylingual can also be used to describe things that involve or that are written or spoken in multiple languages, as in These instructions are polylingualâtheyâre written in seven different languages.
Example: Being polylingual is a great advantage when applying for international jobs.
Where doesÌępolylingual come from?
The word polylingual is composed of poly-, meaning âmany,â and lingual, which means âpertaining to languages.â Lingual shares a root with other language-related words, like linguistics and linguaphile.
Some people who are polylingual may be masters of all the languages they speak. In this case, theyâre often called polyglots. But a person might be describedâor describe themselvesâas polylingual even if theyâre not fluent in all of the languages they can speak. Most polylingual people have differing levels of fluency for each language they know.
Countries can be described as polylingual when they have two or more official or widely used languages. India, for example, is one of the most polylingual countries, with more than 20 official languages and at least 100 others, as well as hundreds of dialects.
Did you know ... ?
What are some other forms related to polylingual?
- polylingually (adverb)
What are some synonyms for polylingual?
What are some words that share a root or word element with polylingual?Ìę
What are some words that often get used in discussing polylingual?
How isÌępolylingual used in real life?
Polylingual is most commonly used to describe people who speak more than three languages. Its synonym multilingual is more commonly used.
Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer awardee & one of the Indian diaspora's most well-known writers, talks about polylingual fiction, literature in the time of pandemics, in conversation with
Tune in podcastsâ RedFMIndia (@RedFMIndia)
Help me, polylingual twitter: can any of you translate this word?
â TristramFaneSaunders (@TATFS)
This coming week, my local, suburban, mainstream multiplex is showing films in six different languages (and Iâm not even counting Dr. Dolittleâs polylingual abilities). Pretty cool, huh?
â Scimmia Lustrini (@monkeyspangles)
Ìę
Ìę
Try usingÌępolylingual!
Is polylingual used correctly in the following sentence?
In some places, the street signs are polylingual since there are multiple widely spoken languages.
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