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Powell Alexander Janulus (born 1939) is a notable living Polyglot, also known as "the most fluent person on earth." In 1985, Powell Janulus was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for fluency in 42 languages. To qualify, he had to pass a two-hour conversational fluency test with a native speaker of each of the 42 different languages he spoke at that time.

History of Powell Janulus:

Powell Janulus was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was exposed to many Slavic languages as a child. His Polish mother spoke in six languages while his Lithuanian father spoke at least four. He could speak 13 languages fluently at the age of at the age of 18. He attended Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia where he attempted to learn Mandarin. In an interview he states^[1] that he struggled with the academic teaching style. He became curious about the process of language learning. He grew interested in the way that children learn languages so easily and began a lifelong project of testing natural language acquisition methods. He attempted to learn Chinese by having conversations and practiced talking with as many people as possible. During his early twenties, he began to develop a unique methodology for fast language acquisition.

In his thirties, he became a court translator and got paid for each language he could translate. He worked to learn two or three languages per year, as each language allowed him to earn more at his job. He was authorized the provincial court of British Columbia, as a court translator in 28 languages. He states that he later became interested in language variations and could quickly learn related languages such as Spanish and Portuguese. In his forties he expanded his repertoire to include less common languages such as Tibetan, Romani (Gypsy), Inuit (Eskimo) and Swahili. Later in life he opened The Geneva Language Institute, a language school in Vancouver BC.

In 1985, Powell was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records for spoken fluency in 42 languages. To qualify, he had to pass a two-hour conversational fluency test with a native speaker of each language he spoke at that time. The previous record holder, a UN translator, had passed with 28. Powell considered himself skilled in 64 languages and, says that he has studied at least 80 languages in total.

In an interview, Powell claims that the late John Candy hired him to help him speak Punjabi for the movie ``Who's Harry Crumb?.

It was widely reported^[2] that Powell Speaks the following 42 languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, German, Dutch, Frisian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Kashub, Lusatian, Wendic, Belarusian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Armenian, Sinhalese, Tibetan, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Croatian, Greek, Turkish, Kurdish, Finnish, Korean and Persian. This list does not include English which, is his native language.

Research of Powell's Unique Approach to Language Learning: In 1985 the NLP author, Robert Dilts, conducted several short sessions to model Powell Janulus's cognitive learning strategies. He wrote about this in his book Modeling With NLP.^[3] In 1991 Marilyn Atkinson PhD, began a 7 year program of researching Powell Janulus unique approach to language learning. To paraphase her research notes^[4] and additional materials, Marilyn Atkinson concluded that:

1. Powell wanted to get inside each language as a complete culture of communication. While interviewing a native speaker, he mirrored their sounds, facial expressions, and gestures. This mirroring included the tone and, most importantly, the rhythm of each language. He would physically mirror and repeat this process until he got a feeling of connection with the speaker. He would memorize how it felt to say each sentence, so he could retrieve it later as a complete expression. He had a different rhythm or ‘gear,’ as he called it, for each new language he learned so that he would never confuse them.
2. In order to know the language from the inside out, he completely identified with that language by immediately pretending to be a native speaker. His goal was to think like a native speaker of Chinese, Hindi or Swahili. While on his own, he intensively continued a practice of thinking in the new language.
3. Instead of being afraid of making mistakes, he embraced them. He asked permission to explore the language in such a passionate manner that native speakers would enjoy stopping their day to give him free language lessons.He took advantage of all opportunities to speak his new language.
4. He was constantly looking for people to talk to. He genuinely loved talking to people in his new language.

Additional Infomation:

Powell was reported to have died in 2006, however this was inaccurate. His disappearance was due to a stroke he suffered at that time. He later reported that he lost his ability to speak English, due to brain damage. In interviews, he claims to have regained his English spoken ability by speaking Dutch with a nurse. He is currently retired and living in New Westminster, BC Canada. In August 2013, he was again the subject of a language genius modelling event,(see [[video|Video]]) during which spoke at least 20 languages and modeled the learning process with Korean and Tagalog.

Books:

Modeling With NLP, by Robert Dilts, Meta Publications, 1998, ISBN-13: 978-0916990466: Robert Dilts discusses his process of modelling Powell Janulus in 1987.

Guinness Book of World Records 1985, Publisher: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.; 23rd US Edition edition (1985) ISBN-13: 978-0806902647

Velocity Instant Fluency, by Paul Gossen and Marilyn Atkinson, Velocity Learning, 2014, ISBN-13: 978-0978375515: Page 17, This book contains an extensive biography of Powell Janulus and many anecdotal stories about his learning style.

How to find your way to foreign languages by D. B. Nikulicheva, in Russian, Publisher: Flinta (2009), ISBN-13: 978-5976508279: Nikulicheva was a translator for Marilyn Atkinson in Russia. This book contains many references to Powell Janulus.

Articles:

Article, June 3 1985,Associated Press News Archive Powell Janulus Newspaper Article: 1998 Stacy Brown, Staff Writer, Daily News

Article in the Ukrainian Weekly, September 22, 1985

History of Powell Janulus webpage

Tony Barlow: Article on Modeling “Genius” Learners using NLP

Research:

Marilyn Atkinson, Research Notes on Powell Janulus

Brent Cameron, Masters Thesis, 1990, Simon Fraser University: WonderTree, A Study in the Principles and Methodologies of a Wholistic Natural Learning Model, references the research by Dilts and Atkinson into Powell Janulus.

Interviews:

1992 interview in which Marilyn Atkinson demonstrates the modelling process with Powell Janulus

2013 interview in which Powell Janulus speaks many languages, during a modelling session with Marilyn Atkinson

Links:

Albanian Wiki List of Polyglots that includes Powell Janulus

German Wiki List of Polyglots that includes Powell Janulus

Russian online dictionary with a List of Polyglots that includes Powell Janulus