Timothy Doner

Timothy "Tim" Doner (born 25 October 1995) is an American hyperpolyglot, former social media personality and a foreign policy analyst at the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies, specializing in the Middle East and Central Asia.^[1] A graduate of Harvard University^[2] and the University of Cambridge,^[3] he rose to prominence at the age of 16 when he released a YouTube video in 2012 in which he spoke 20 different languages.^[4] He is a native of Manhattan, New York City and resident of the East Village.

Timothy Doner
Born	(1995-10-25) October 25, 1995 (age 29) Manhattan, New York City, U.S.
Education	Dalton School
Alma mater	Harvard University University of Cambridge

Early life and education

Timothy Doner was born to Betsy and Ezra Doner on October 25, 1995 in Manhattan, New York City, United States. Tim's prelude to learning languages apparently began at the age of 13 when he started teaching himself Hebrew out of interest in 2009^[5] after memorizing the lyrics of his favorite funk band Hadag Nahash.^[6] He then moved to Arabic^[7] and other languages, like Persian, Pashto, Hindi, Indonesian, Wolof,^[5] Hausa, Swahili, IsiXhosa, Ojibwe, Dutch, Italian, Japanese^{[disputed (for: Japanese is not mentioned in the Times article. seek reliable source)  – discuss]}, etc. Doner studied at the Dalton School.^[4]

Languages

The languages that Doner has publicly displayed that he can speak, fluently or not, are these, in no particular order.

List of languages Doner has been shown to speak
Language	Source
English (native language)	[4]
French	[4]
Yiddish	[4]
Hebrew	[4]
Kurdish	[4]
Arabic	[4]
Persian	[4]
Turkish	[4]
Dutch	[4]
German	[4]
Pashto	[4]
Mandarin Chinese	[4]
Swahili	[4]
Hausa	[4]
Ojibwe	[4]
Indonesian	[4]
Italian	[4]
Hindi	[4]
Russian	[4]
Bengali	[citation needed]
Japanese	[citation needed]
Xhosa
Wolof	[5]

Personal life

During a short interview on the Australian breakfast show program Sunrise, Doner revealed that Persian is one of his favorite languages and is fond of reading the works of 14th-century Iranian poet Hafez-e-Shirazi.^[8]