Many of the characters of Star Wars knows a understanding of a dozen or so languages.

Luke spoke Basic, Jawa, Binary, Bocce, Yuzz, Shyriiwook, as well as numerous others.

Han Solo had basic, Huttese, Shyriiwook, Rodese, Sullustian, Bocce, as well as a dozen more.

In short, my character is a polygot. A person with a gift for learning and picking up languages quickly. How many languages would be an acceptable cap, a dozen seems normal for a active spacer.

So I am looking for opinion for the club on this.

I understand the point of knowing but cant speak. I understand Maori near fluently by sound but if I see it wrote or try to speak it I butcher it.

The character is trained in linguistics. And fluency is not expected while working ability can be.

I am thinking for a trained linguist and polygot... 14? and the character reads and studies constantly.

I speak English, a large amount of french, german, dutch, and japanese. I understand but cant speak Maori. I have a small working knowledge of esperanto, spanish, and italian. I know a few words of burmese, nahuatl, and a questionable working knowledge of several middle east languages do to similiarity.

Also I know about 10 words of Zentradi.

My character as of now speaks =
- Basic (Galactic Standard)
- Bocce (Composite Spacer Language)
- Codruese (Native)
- Binary (Droid Speak): Understands not speaks
- Em'liy (Threw Archaeology interests)
- Gran (has shared elements to bocce)
- Huttese (has shared elements to bocce)
- Jawa Trade Language
- Rodese (has shared elements to bocce)
- Shyriiwook (Wookie): Understands not speaks
- Tusken Raider (Tatooine): Understands not speaks

I want to eventually learn these =
- Anomid sign language
- Charon (Threw Archaeology interests)
- Old Corellian (part of the roots of basic)
- Old Tatooini (part of the roots of basic)
- Gand
- High Galactic (Sophisticated society version of basic)
- Mando'a (Mandalorian) (Threw Archaeology interests)
- Massassi (Threw Archaeology interests)
- Sith (Threw Archaeology interests)
- Tetan (Threw Archaeology interests)
- Twi'leki (has shared elements to bocce)
- Ubese

... what? Wasn't this about languages in the star wars universe?

Sorry its been a long night and I got my germanics crossed with my romance. Either way we are off topic, can anyone give me any insight into my SW question.

For future reference, please for the love of god take this to the lounge or PMs or something.

Speaking as a natural linguist myself, although I have made myself familiar with over 20 languages through book reading (independent of school courses) and various multicultural endeavors, I only became fluent in the four languages I had courses in. From what I know through research and speaking with instructors on the subject, 6-12 languages would be reasonable. Over a few years (real time) that could grow with your character to 12-16. After developing this one character for 9-10 years, maybe getting that 18th language learned but that's it. Any new languages learned after that is at the cost of losing fluency in one she has.

Savants are the exception. Savants can excel in an area of knowledge and/or ability far beyond what others could ever hope to accomplish. The downside is that they are functionally handicapped in almost everything else.

Remember, the galaxy needs protocol droids Earth alone has hundreds of languages (even I don't know them all). With the number of cultures spanning a galaxy being truly astronomical (even to estimate), the conceivable number of languages is a whole order of magnitude greater. Take Chinese for example: it's not just Chinese, it's mandarin (pu'tung'hua) and Cantonese (yueh), two related languages that functionally get along, clearly more distinct than just being dialects.

I hope this helps you

Also consider that languages like Twi'lek cannot be either properly spoken or understood without certain physical aspects such as Lekku.