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

In the Netherlands, I visited a gymnasium, roughly equivalent to a British grammar school, where six languages are obligatory subjects: Dutch, English, French and Latin in the first year, and German and Ancient Greek in the second. After the third year, pupils have to choose a fixed combination of subjects which one would take in the final three years with at least Dutch, English and one classical language. I chose the track Cultuur en Maatschappij (culture and society) with Dutch, English, German, Latin and Ancient Greek and decided to study Classics at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. After two years, I chose to study German Language and Literature as well. When I moved to Berlin and started working on a doctorate at the Humboldt-Universität, I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands that I could dedicate to learning numerous languages in which I took an interest. The language I love most is Yiddish, which I learned both at a summer course organized by the Maison de la culture Yiddish in Paris and by communicating with Hasidic speakers of the language.

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

I wish I had more time to keep up my abilities in the languages I already mastered and simultaneously take languages like Hebrew, Hindi and Romanian to the next level.

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

Persian, Papiamento, Romani – ideally Sinto-Romanes, if possible –, Bahasa Indonesia and a variety of Arabic, probably Egyptian.

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

Yiddish, without a doubt. vus ken ikh zugn? It’s the only language in which you can effortlessly combine elevated vocabulary and expressions from the Hebrew Bible with the most vulgar swear words from Germanic and Slavic sources. Reading the erotic poetry published at 93 by the recently deceased poetess Troim Katz-Handler (1927 – 2023) in her book Simkhe (Celebration) – Volume II will give you an impression: see https://troim.net.

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

Speaking these languages enables me to communicate with a lot of people from different parts of the world in the language of their hearts, thereby establishing a direct connection. Furthermore, I have direct access to a large body of world literature: being able to read Homer’s Iliad in the original language and feeling twenty-eight centuries just disappear is an unbelievable thrill.

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?

It’s going to be very interesting to see some languages remain alive and kicking somewhat unexpectedly, whilst other languages and language varieties will inevitably disappear at least in a spoken form. In Yiddish, you would say: az men lebt, derlebt men – whilst you live, you will experience. On the other side, people have been predicting the disappearance of Afrikaans for numerous years now and thanks to conscious efforts by its speakers, the language is doing fairly well.

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

Never forget that there is no rule that says you have to persist until you know a language in such-and-such level. Never forget that mistakes are a necessity if you want to progress. Never forget to distrust translation software and to ignore people who are telling you learning languages in this day and age makes no sense: the effort you put in will be appreciated to a very large extent by those born in the language of your choice. Never forget that literature is both a means and an end. Never forget that the form of the language that most closely resembles the spoken language of the people is to be found in erotic stories on the internet. Never forget that it shouldn’t be about the result, but about the joy of magic of discovering a world you couldn’t have imagined before you started out on this linguistic journey.