Many of our ancestors were fluent in several languages along with their native language.
History knows many famous people who improved their knowledge by studying foreign languages and are known as polyglots. Most of the thinkers of the Medieval East were fluent in several languages. Among them is the great thinker Abu Nasr al-Farabi, who knew many languages. Ancient sources indicate that contemporaries recognized Farabi as a carrier of more than 70 languages.
Knowledge of many languages was widespread in the second half of the 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries. Enlightened Jadids urged people to learn foreign languages, because knowledge of foreign languages, in addition to the native one, made it possible to study the history, culture, life, and development of other peoples.
The Uzbek educator Iskhakhon Ibrat was fluent in more than a dozen languages, including Arabic, English, Russian, Urdu, Persian, French and Hindi. He also studied ancient Phoenician, Hebrew, Syriac and Greek. In 1901, Iskhakhon Ibrat published the book “Lugat Sitta as-Sinna” (Six-Language Dictionary) in Uzbek, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Turkish and Russian. This treatise was intended for the local population interested in learning foreign languages.
The scientist and traveler Haji Yusuf Hayati was fluent in Arabic, English, Persian, French and Greek. Literary critic and teacher Ashurali Zahiri was fluent in all Turkic languages, except Arabic and Persian, as well as Russian. In 1925, he published a Russian-Uzbek dictionary.
Behbudi, who also knew several languages well, believed that knowledge of many languages was necessary for the development of a nation. In the first issue of the Oyna magazine, he published an article “We need to know not only two, but four languages”, in which he wrote that it was necessary to know Uzbek, Persian, Arabic, Russian, and some other Western foreign language, such as French.
The first Uzbek professor Abdurauf Fitrat, apart from Uzbek, was fluent in Arabic, Russian, Turkish and Persian. The poet and writer Abdulkhamid Chulpan, who was fluent in these languages, also studied German and French in a Russian-native school and subsequently consolidated his knowledge.
Known not only as the Minister of Education of the Turkestan Republic, but also as a linguist, Nazir Turakulov was fluent in Arabic, German, Russian, Turkish, Persian and French. A high-ranking statesman and public figure Inomjon Khidiraliyev spoke 11 languages.
At the age of 24, Fayzulla Khodjayev, who became the head of the Republic of Bukhara, and at the age of 29 headed the government of Uzbekistan, in addition to Uzbek, was fluent in German, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Russian, Tatar and Tajik. His peer Abdulla Rakhimbayev, who headed the Turkestan CEC at the age of 24, knew 14 languages.
Alisher Egamberdiyev, UzA