1. What’s your story? How did you get into all these languages?

I usually like to think that my language journey started when me and my parents moved to the US when I was 9 years old, but I think it actually goes back to my childhood. I grew up in a Turkish speaking household, and Turkish was the only language I ever spoke until we moved to the US, but my father is originally Dimli or Zaza, and he grew up speaking Dimili, as well as Kurmanci. He learned Turkish in school, because it was forbidden to speak any other language, and eventually Turkish became his native language. But every time we would go back to his home town of Bitlis, he would speak in Dimili with his side of the family. In fact, my grandparents did not speak a word of Turkish, and I did not speak their language. So my father had to become the interpreter between us. They both passed away before I could speak to them in person. I guess that was the first impact languages had on me.

Back to us moving to the US: My parents wanted to learn English so they found a kind of exchange program that allowed them to stay and study in the US, and while they attended a language school there, I went to an ordinary elementary school with virtually no knowledge of English. I had to learn it by myself, as I studied the 4th grade. I became fluent very quickly, as is the case with children, and started translating things for my temporarily-immigrant parents, including live interactions as well as official documents, however the latter I must say I wasn’t the best at. Years later, I attended a francophone high school in Istanbul, Galatasaray Lisesi, where I learned French. I think that was the first time I seriously studied a language and became fluent in it as a result of my hard work, because learning English had come so naturally to me that this was a new challenge. In high school we also had selective Italian and Latin courses available, I took both. Then in university came Spanish, as a result of my newly gained confidence in language-learning, and then Valencian when I moved to Valencia for my year abroad. I also studied Kurdish around the same time, however I had actually intended to learn my father’s mother tongue, Dimili, which is closely related to Kurmanci but because my father’s side of the family speak a very unique and isolated dialect of Dimili, I couldn’t find any courses to attend to or any resources to base my studies on, so I settled with the second best option, Kurmanci. I took some courses, then studied mainly on my own, practising every opportunity I got, while constantly listening to Kurdish music. After reaching a certain level, a few years ago, I asked my father to try and teach me some Dimili, which he did to the best of his abilities. He tried to remember his forgotten tongue as he taught it to me. I can now speak a little bit, but I still have a lot to learn.

Circling back to my year abroad in Valencia: I improved my Spanish greatly there, living with 3 Spaniards as well as studying a Spanish Architecture degree really helped me immerse myself. I also picked up on Valencian as I said, but I ended up learning a mix of Valencian and Catalan, since there were many more resources available in the eastern dialect than in the western one. I also improved my high-school Italian a great deal in Valencia thanks to all of my non-conforming Italian friends. And throughout this time, obviously, apps like Duolingo and books such as Teach Yourself became household staples. I studied, to varying extents and varying degrees of perseverance Welsh, Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Basque etc. I’m currently trying to save and care for my languishing French while trying to learn Modern Standard Arabic, Greek and my ancestral language Dimili.

2. Which language(s) do you wish you could spend more time practising?

Definitely Dimili, and especially the specific dialect that is spoken in Bitlis. There are a lot of studies and therefore available learning materials for the other major dialects, however our dialect, I believe, is not even on the radar. It is not even mentioned as a separate dialect, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but when it’s listed as part of the Southern Dialect for instance, and then you go and pick up a book in the Southern Dialect, it is clearly quite different. And given that I am a contemporary learner, for the lack of a better word, I need a lot of resources including books, videos, songs etc. to learn by immersing myself, I find myself hitting a wall when it comes to going beyond the basics. It appears that the only way for me to actually learn and possibly document our dying dialect is to go to Bitlis, live there for some time, and spend my days talking to the elderly. I’ve not had the courage to leave everything and start this journey yet, but one day I hope I will.

3. What are some languages you’d like to learn in the future?

Arabic and Greek, both of which I’m currently studying, and definitely Persian, which I’ve studied briefly at some point. All these languages contribute one way or another to my understanding of Turkish history and culture. I also used to dream of learning all the languages spoken in Turkey, like Kurdish, Dimili, Armenian, Greek, Laz, Syriac etc. But struggling with learning even one of them, Dimili, my father’s native tongue, I’ve come to realise that learning each and everyone of them may not be feasible. I’m also thinking about expanding my horizons a bit, trying something that is neither Indo-European, nor Turkic, nor Semitic. Maybe Bahasa Indonesia one day, or Thai. We’ll see.

4. So let’s be honest, which language has the most charm for you?

I would say Turkish, because I love its expressiveness. But I know I’m biased so I’ll say, a language that I have no knowledge of, and definitely one that is not European. I know, most of the languages I speak or I am currently learning are European, and even Kurmanci and Dimili are from the Indo-Iranian branch of the same greater family. But I must admit, I am just so bored of the same predictability. It does not come to me as the exciting puzzle it once used to. It just doesn’t provide me with the same excitement anymore. The joy I would get from discovering some unique features of, say Catalan compared to other Romance languages for instance, is now eclipsed by the rush I get when trying to read a menu in an Indonesian restaurant and figuring out by myself that “nasi” means rice and “ayam” means chicken. Plus, after hearing people around me in the UK constantly utter eurocentric nonsense when talking about languages, like “Proto-Indo-European is the oldest language in the world” or “Cebuano or Tagalog do not have the complexity of Spanish”, I’m now naturally attracted to languages outside of Europe.

5. What’s the greatest pleasure you get from speaking so many languages?

I think it’s being able to have special relationships with people. To give an example, if I meet a Spanish-speaking person in London, it’s more likely that we’ll be closer friends than we would have been if we had just spoken in English. That is the only way I can explain why I had truly personal relationships, including inside-jokes, with so many Spanish speakers at my company, from the lowest ranks of the firm all the way to senior partners, compared to the ordinary and expected relationship I had with English speakers.

6. Some people say the world is really just going to have a few languages left in a 100 years, do you think this is really true?

I think so, yes. I am completely against the phenomenon, but it has been happening for a long time and this process is currently at an unprecedented speed. The only thing we can do is to hold on to our indigenous languages, and try to use them in every aspect of our lives.

Daniel Nettle and Suzanne Romaine have a fascinating book called Vanishing Voices, in which they explore the history of language death around the world. They suggest that biodiversity and linguistic diversity are correlated and that the destruction of the environment also goes hand-in-hand with the eradication of indigenous cultures, and therefore their languages. They provide many historic examples ranging from the Neolithic age to the early modern era, demonstrating how the spread of a people and their way of living eradicated the vast linguistic diversity in affected areas, but also pointing out that because these historic processes took centuries, even millenia to occur, the languages carried by this spread started diverging and eventually led to an equally diverse linguistic equilibrium. In other words, the spread of Indo-European cultures across Eurasia might have destroyed the pre-existing diversity of languages there, but it happened in such a long period of time that that linguistic richness was eventually replaced by another diverse linguistic environment. However, given that these changes are now happening much more quickly, there is not enough time for the “conquering languages” to diverge enough before they eradicate every language in their new home. The spread of English for instance, has happened so fast over the last few centuries that English spoken in Australia is still very similar to that of North America, but the linguistic diversity they’ve destroyed, i.e. the vast number of indigenous languages spoken in those places, will never be replaced by a possible diversity in their respective ways of speaking English.

So yes, it is happening, and language diversity might one day be a thing of the past. But polyglots might be able to help halt this trend.

7. What is your message to young (and not so young) people out there who are interested in studying multiple languages?

Just do it. There is nothing like it. It’s like solving a puzzle that connects you to people. And if you can, try adding an indigenous language to the mix. Everyone speaks European languages, I’m not one to talk, I know. But in a world where most polyglots speak exclusively European languages, learning an indigenous language will not only provide you with a fun challenge, it might also help the community speaking that language. Look at Irish and Scottish Gaelic having a comeback, look at Cornish being reborn from its ashes. Or the amazing state of Catalan which would have been unimaginable 50 years ago. It’s not government programmes funding the teaching of these languages or putting them in curricula and turning them into just another boring subject at school what kept them alive, it’s uncompromising native speakers and in most cases, some language nerds obsessing over saving a dying language nobody cares about.