Baloney

Old Riddle:

Q. What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
A. Bilingual.

Q. And someone who speaks three languages?
A. Trilingual.

Q. More than three?
A. Polyglot.

Q. And someone who speaks only one?
A. American

#19, the version I've heard ends with 'English'. ;)

Whenever I go to another country, I try to learn at least a little of the language there. Hence the reason I speak a little bit of them and would never be considered fluent. Although, I am trying to become more fluent in French. Unfortunately, a lot of English speaking people take it for granted that they will find someone who speaks at least a little English whereever they go, which is usually the case.

I think in many English-speaking countries, the people would have had some form of formal foreign language classes at school, say at secondary/high school, so their knowledge of another language besides English is not zilch, albeit very basic/rudimentary? I could be wrong though, just playing devil's advocate here....

I don't take polls like that seriously either, that's why I'm one of those who clicked on "One...barely. I'm struggling " (I think I was the first one).

#19 That's a very old joke, which probably exists in many versions. I once heard it ending with "French".

#23 -- That's probably true of most Americans. But almost 20% of Americans speak a language other than English as their native language, and the vast majority of those people are fluent in English (by most people's definition). So there are a fair number of true bilinguals here even if the foreign language teachers can't take credit for many of them.

#24 -- I was surprised to see no one claiming "infinity times infinity" for that reason.

Actually, two people claimed "infinity x infinity" but they account for only 0.4% , which is rounded down to zero. This might also explain why the whole poll doesn't add up to 100%.

By the way, "infinity times infinity" equals infinity.

I was about to go check "infinity times infinity" to see if I get it up to 1% but the poll isn't on my screen at the moment.

Countable or uncountable (infinity)?

Countable, no? You'd ask for half a dozen infinities, not a kilogram of infinity. (You might not get half a dozen infinities, at least not anytime soon, but it's what you'd ask for.)