As a lover (and learner) of languages, I often struggle with what to call myself and other fans of languages. Also, I’m a bit of a language geek, so although I prefer the word “linguaphile”, I don’t like that it mixes Latin (lingua) and Greek (phile) in the same word, and the purely Greek “glottophile” sounds a bit weird to me, as does Plain English “tongue lover”
“Multilingual” maybe? But I’m really only bilingual.
So what do you folks call yourselves in relation to your love of languages and learning languages, and how do you refer to other language lovers and language learners?
I use Polyglot as a nickname. Someone else on Twitch also used to do that, now she uses LottaGlots… I’d say, just call yourself bilingual. And if you learn a new language trilingual, quadrilingual. It only starts to become confusing beyond that point.
In the last couple decades and in looking into the future, the relative ease of language acquisition is greatly changing.
Perhaps it’s similar and somewhat parallel to cuisine’s globalization. My great-grandparents, grandparents, and even parents had such limited palates. I, on the other hand, love food from around the world and don’t have much allegiance to any one food tradition. I love to cook too and prepare dishes from various cultures, even with intentional aspects of fusion.
I’m what’s now called a “foodie.” The word carries connotations of curiosity, openness, and love.
Because of various changes, it’s now much more accessible to be a globalized food lover, language lover, and culture lover.
But, as far as I know, there’s not a word like “foodie” for languages.
I remember I searched time ago about it because I was a bit confuse as well, and didn’t want to attribute to myself too much compared of what I was in terms of CV.
As @Polyglot_OpenStreetMap said, bilingual, trilingual and quadrilingual are still accepted. So, I used multilingual with 5 languages. I had read that polyglot was used more with 7 languages and above. So, I guess multilingual was correct in the middle of the territory, and I liked it more.
I am happy to use the names chosen by my parents, I have not had any complaints. I’ve met countless people completely fluent in two, three or more languages, and they’ve introduced themselves with their given names. One grew up speaking four languages fluently, and learnt several more. I knew her as Tina. Perhaps I should have addressed her as Your Magnificent Hyperglotness.
I refer to myself as an amateur linguist. Linguaphile is certainly appropriate if that’s what you want to use, but in my circles linguist or language enthusiast works better.
