Sometimes, characters are casually given skills with languages which would be very remarkable in real life, if not downright unrealistic. Most people find it hard work to achieve native-level fluency in just one foreign language, even when they're a full time student of it, but a fictional character might speak thirty languages well enough to be mistaken for a native speaker in each. Or the character might somehow learn the local language fluently just by chatting while playing cards each evening for a few weeks. Or perhaps, due to having taken evening classes for a month when they were twenty years younger, they are able to win debates on metaphysics in a particular language. At the very least, they read the Genius Book Club books in the original language.