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

I was born and raised in Sicily in a bilingual family where everyone speaks Italian and Sicilian. I've always been curious about languages and cultures and I always loved learning new things. I started learning English at school when I was 9 and I would spend my free time listening to songs in English and translating the lyrics. English was my very first foreign language and it quickly became my favourite subject at school. In high school I had a brilliant English teacher who made me realise I wanted to build my future around languages so I decided to study "Foreign languages and translation" at university to become a translator. I got my BA in English, Spanish and Russian and I started working as translator and language instructor in 2016. While I was perfectionating my Russian, I decided to expand my knowledge of Slavic languages by adding Polish to the list. I immediately felt comfortable because of the similarities between these two languages. As many other polyglots may think, languages are never enough for me. So once I felt confident enough with Polish I tried to learn other languages (among which Arabic and Turkish). In the last couple of years I focused mostly on Ukrainian and Norwegian.

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

I definitely need to spend more time on my Norwegian and I would like to go back to Turkish as soon as possible because it's a very fascinating language to me.

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

So many! I'd love to learn Farsi, Korean, Maltese and maybe Armenian or Kazakh.

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

That's a very difficult question. I deeply love all the languages I speak for one reason or another and I periodically change my mind when I'm asked what's my favourite. Slavic languages are particularly charming for me so I would say I have a soft spot for Russian and Polish.

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

Speaking so many languages gives me the chance to really be myself. I feel a bit different when switching from one to the other because each of them emphasizes a different aspect of my personality. I learnt and I keep learning new things from the culture they represent and I feel enriched by that.

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 don't think it's true. Despite witnessing the death of several minority languages every day, there are people who are very committed to keeping those languages alive as long as possible. I'm one of them. I work and fight everyday for the sake of Sicilian language and I feel we're experiencing a sort of general "awakening". People are more conscious, generally speaking. There will be changes in 100 years of course, but it's not such a long period as we may think to completely erase the majority of languages currently existing.

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

Keep going! Don't let anyone decide IF and WHICH language(s) you should or shouldn't learn. Don't believe in stereotypes about languages and do whatever makes you happy. A language is the mirror of the people who speak it and the culture it represents. Languages are all equally beautiful, important and worthy. Learning multiple languages will make you a better human being and it will give you the right tools to interpret life.