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

I was born in Barcelona in the 90’s, when the city turned into one of the main tourist destinations in the continent. When I was 4 or 5, I was the only local child in the park and I wanted to play with the other children, but I wasn’t able to communicate because I only spoke Spanish and Catalan back then. That moment sparked my curiosity and I asked my mother to sign me up for English classes. I started my English lessons at school, as an extracurricular activity. A couple of years later, I stopped having English lessons at school and started at a language school, because the teachers were better. As they offered other languages and my mother had studied French in her youth, I decided that I wanted to study French too. By the time I was 16, I already spoke 4 languages fluently and since my English teacher was Brazilian, I decided to give Portuguese a go. When I started university two years later, instead of choosing English and French as my source languages in my Bachelor’s Degree in Translation and Interpreting, I chose English and German, just to spice things up. Italian was the first language I started to learn on my own, but I reached a professional level during lockdown. I was almost unemployed and about to start my Master’s in Conference Interpreting, so I spent 6 months focused on my Italian lessons. During my Master’s, I studied Greek and I’ve been learning Dutch in the past 2 years.

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

I wish I had more time to improve my Dutch and my Greek and I also wish I had more time to speak Italian and German. Because of professional reasons I need to focus on working on my French, English and Portuguese, so I can’t allocate the time that I’d like to the other languages.

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

Japanese, Romanian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Bulgarian, Creole Réunionais, Hindi, Irish, Basque, Haitian, Tagalog, Swahili, Amazic, Tupi, Hawaiian, Galician, Occitan, Napolitan, Icelandic

4. So let’s be honest, what’s the sexiest language?

I find Brazilian Portuguese fascinating because of how American and African loanwords have blended in, making it a melting pot, just like the people who speak it.

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

In many occasions, I have been able to help people who were not able to communicate with someone because of the language barrier. I helped them order a meal, understand that their bus was late or that they were on the wrong bus, buy an entrance for a museum, etc.

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 that a few languages is too extreme, but I do believe that we are going to witness the death of several languages, especially in the Americas, Asia and Africa. People are moving to the biggest cities because of economic hardship. They will need to adapt to a different society where other languages (national languages or colonial languages) are spoken. Unfortunately, their children and grandchildren won’t see the worth of their family’s language and they won’t pass it on the following generations. It is tragic and I hope that I’m wrong and it won’t happen, but I’m afraid this is going to be the trend throughout the 21st century.

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

Go for it! It is never too late. There is no way of doing it wrong. Starting is always the  hardest phase, it can be extremely frustrating, but do not give up. It is such an enriching  and rewarding process. Once you’re able to start having conversations and accelerate the  learning curve, you will not regret it. And trust me, that adrenaline is addictive.  Boyfriends and girlfriends can cheat on you, languages won’t.