Forty-six-year-old Vaughn Smith, a carpet cleaner, can speak eight languages fluently, including English, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Slovak, and Czech.
However, a report from The Washington Post quoted him saying, "if you go by like, different grades of how much conversations," he knows how to speak about 25 languages more.
According to the media outlet's Jessica Contrera, Smith glanced at her, still underselling his abilities. She said that by the man's count, it is 37 more languages, with approximately 24 he speaks very fluently enough to carry on long conversations.
Have you ever met someone who makes you question the limits of human potential?
— Jessica Contrera (@mjcontrera) April 5, 2022
For the past few months, I’ve had the honor of spending time with a carpet cleaner named Vaughn Smith. You’re not going to believe me when I tell you what he can do. https://t.co/ZNc6wYLlN8
Smith can both read and write in eight scripts and alphabets. More so, he can tell stories in Finnish and Italian, and American Sign Language. In addition to this, the man also teaches himself Indigenous languages from Nahuatl of Mexico to Salish of Montana. Furthermore, the quality of his accents in Dutch and Catalan are dazzling to people from Spain and the Netherlands.
A Real, Live 'Polyglot'
According to a report from the Rocket Languages website, one of Smith's clients, Kelly Widelska, describes him as a "real, live polyglot, a person who can speak multiple languages.
Widelska, who's dabbling in Cantonese, Mandarin, "and beer in most languages," said she had seen polyglots only on YouTube, promising that anyone can become multilingual if he tries.
Far more unique are the word's so-called "hyperpolyglots." As defined by experts, these are people who can speak 11 or more languages. The higher the number a person says, the rarer he becomes.
There have been a lot of documented cases, though, of such linguistic legends, each one bringing out questions about the limits of potential of humans, the same question Vaugn had been asked.
Abilities Beyond the Ordinary
To this multilingual man, he's not interested in impressing people. In fact, he only counted the languages he spoke because he was asked to. Smith understands that he appears to remember numbers, dates, sounds, and names far better than most people. Even to this man, his abilities have always been a mystery. However, his reason for his life's dedication to learning so many languages hasn't.
At first, the carpet cleaner thought there were two languages: English, the language his father spoke, and Spanish, as spoken by his mother. This man liked visiting his family in Mexico, while he liked how the Spanish words sounded in his mouth.
How He Turned Multilingual
However, growing up in Maryland, he frequently tried not to use them. As specified in a similar SFGate report, he did not want to feel even more different than other kids.
Smith was already browner than the others. He already did not understand why other people would laugh at certain things or how they seemed to be able to follow instructions from their teacher that made no sense to him. His first secret was Spanish.
When his father's distant cousins from Belgium came for a visit, they used words different than he had ever heard. This carpet cleaner became more and more frustrated that he was unable to understand again. He felt he wanted to have "that power," remembered Smith. From that time on, he was entranced by each language he met.
A report about the carpet cleaner who can speak more than 20 languages is shown on the Washington Post's YouTube video below:
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