According to the Talmud (B. Sotah 36b), Pharaoh's selection of Joseph as viceroy of the kingdom greatly displeased the monarch's astrologers. Joseph's lowly pedigree as a Hebrew slave bothered them in particular. The Talmud imagines the following conversation between Pharaoh and his astrologers:
ASTROLOGERS: You are going to allow a slave whose purchase price was twenty pieces of silver to rule over us?!
PHARAOH: I see the attributes of royalty within him.
ASTROLOGERS: If he has royalty within him, then he should be fluent in the seventy languages (of the world.)
The Talmud then says that the angel Gavriel immediately started to teach Joseph the seventy languages, but Joseph couldn't master them. So God added a letter "hay" to Joseph's name so that he would be able to pass the astrologers' test of foreign language knowledge.
This midrash is an explanation of the fact that Joseph's name does in fact appear with an extra letter "hay" in Psalm 81, where it is written יהוסף instead of the normal יוסף. The content of the verse reflects back on the midrash:
"This he ordained in Joseph for a testimony, when he went out through the land of Egypt. I heard the language of one whom I had not known."
Knowing foreign languages may not be a sign of royalty in our world, but it is a sign of worldliness. It is known that learning a foreign language is beneficial for the brain, forcing it to maintain itself as it learns new things.
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