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

When I was still a child, my father could speak English, some Spanish, and he also had some knowledge of Italian and French. Besides that, he had a collection of five language-learning books. One day, I asked him if it was possible for someone to learn all those languages. He said yes, and that those people are known as polyglots. I can still remember that I said I wanted to become a polyglot one day.

But it was only when I was about 12 years old that I started learning English at a language school near my house. That’s when I realized that learning a language wasn’t as difficult as I thought — and that it could be fun. So I started learning some other languages at home, mainly Romance languages such as Spanish, French, and Italian. It didn’t take me long to realize how similar and close to each other Romance languages are, so I started looking for more of them online — and that’s how I started learning Galician, Occitan, and Valencian/Catalan as well.

A few years later, I decided to take another step and learn Greek, which was, after English, my first non-Romance language. I was a little afraid — it was outside my comfort zone — but it was not as hard as I thought it would be. In just one year I was already able to talk to Greek speakers, watch films in Greek, etc.

And that’s when I decided to go even further. I started learning non-Indo-European languages, such as Hebrew, Arabic, and Amazonian Tupi (Nheengatu). The way those languages work is very different from what I was used to. It took me a little longer to get used to them, but I really enjoy the experience of studying and speak them.

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

That changes all the time, but right now the answer is: Arabic.

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

Amharic, Persian, Bulgarian, Japanese, Dutch… and the list goes on.

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

Galician (my wife’s mother tongue), and Portuguese spoken with the accent from the Northeast Region of Brazil (that’s where I’m from haha).

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

I love seeing all the different features that can be found in human languages, which are extremely diverse and present lots of unique expressions and structures. Essentially, I really enjoy learning how different languages work and how unique they are.

Also, talking to people from many different places in their native languages is something I really enjoy. People usually get happy when you speak their tongue — especially when they’re not used to hearing foreigners speak it. It makes people smile, which makes me smile as well. :)

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?

Unfortunately, many languages are dying and disappearing these days. I’m sure that in 100 years there will be fewer languages than today — and that’s extremely sad. Languages that have lived for hundreds or thousands of years, changing and evolving through time, will die soon.

But I don’t think there will be just a few languages left in 100 years. There will still be lots and lots of living languages around the world. I just can’t predict how many, or how the world will behave linguistically in the future.

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

If that’s something you really want to do, go ahead, do it! There are many people around the world who can speak multiple languages. They are people, just like you and me — people who love languages and spend a lot of time learning them (yes, that's something you'll have to do, study a lot).

You don't need any superpowers to study a new language. If other people can do it, I’m sure you can as well.