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

I am Belgian, my mother tongue is French. I have always loved languages and I started studying them in Belgium.

Later, I lived for a period in Spain and France, after which I settled in Italy where I have now lived for  twenty years. I have worked in the export trade since 2002 in close contact with Belgian, French, German, Polish, Tunisian and Portuguese customers.

I speak 6 languages at an advanced level: French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch and English, I have reached average professional level in Portuguese (improved from A2 to B1 during the pandemics) and I am learning some basic Japanese.

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

I wish I could spend more time studying Portuguese and Japanese.

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

I’d like to learn Arabic in the future.

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

I think French is definitely the sexiest language.

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

I love being in touch with people of so many cultures, each of them is a world in itself. I love switching between languages all day long, I have the opportunity to do it at my workplace and also in my private environment because I have a lot of multilingual friends 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?

No, I would never believe such a thing because languages bring culture to the world and also each language has its own way of seeing the world.

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

I would suggest them to learn multiple languages because it’s a satisfaction on a personal point of view and it’s enriching, you also have more possibilities to be hired and find a great job. Languages are my lifelong passion.