how many languages a character can speak is often narrative shorthand for intelligence so it is not surprising to me that it comes up often in wammy's house headcanons but i do find interesting that people often restrict the kids to perhaps three or four including their canonical english & japanese. perhaps throw in there a fanon mothertongue for mello since he is the one with the more foreign sounding real name and therefore exoticized. it's a very usamerican centric perspective imo given how unusual the usa's homogeneity of language is when contrasted to the rest of the world. being multilingual is relatively common really but especially in the global south where dialects vary greatly from location to location. i'd put five to seven languages still in the "very impressive but still in within normal range in the real world" level of ~genius~, BUT we are talking death note which runs on what you can call sherlock holmes logic (the characters are intelligent and therefore impressive because the writer who controls what deductions are right and which aren't, has willed it so) so personally i think it's in line with canon for both mello and near to be highly proficient in at the very least around a dozen languages for which they may have had formal education at wammy's (i don't think it's a stretch that more resources would be allocated towards the education of 'promising' heirs while neglecting those who aren't in the running. hey just like in real life!!!) not to mention there's also the matter of language maintenance & immersion; speaking any given language is famously a use it or lose it skill, but if we take into account that near is probably speaking with law enforcement and government agencies all over the world during the 5 year timeskip and mello is traveling all over the world they would have had plenty of practice. on top of that you can add another dozen languages that they have some level of fluency in that is either lost due to lack of practice or superficial in its acquisition to begin with. basically what im saying is: near and mello can and should be able to communicate in functionally whatever language suits them and when they are arguing they switch to the one that has the exact right flavor of motherfucker they want to call each other that day. near gets very talkative in creole when he's intoxicated. mello has a record for most curse words ever learned that no one will ever know about. japanese makes them far more aware of the structure of their rivalry. and that's not even getting into the semiotics of it all re: languages not only informing but creating the world around you and therefore subtly influencing your personality and sorry where am i what year is it