The International Association
of Hyperpolyglots
HYPIA
est. 2016
Interview with
Inacio Cabral Fula
Name: Inácio Cabral Fula
Nationality or Ethnicity: Angolan
Where do you live?: Luanda, Angola
Languages: Portuguese (native), Spanish, English, French, Italian (fluent), German (intermediate), Swahili and Russian.
Member since:
2022-12-29
1. What's your story? How did you get into these languages?
My interest to languages started when I was amid 12 to 13 years old, I was an ordinary kid until my elder brother decided to keep me away of the streets, he bought me a portable playstation and I got addicted to video games, I use to put the language settings in Spanish because it is closer to Portuguese and the sport show was all in English and Vice versa. After that I bought a notebook and a cellphone, so that was the beginning of everything.
2. Which languages do you wish you could spend more time practicing?
I wish I could spend more time practicing Russian, Swahili and Norwegian. I hope I will have much more time to keep practicing them in the near future.
3. What are some languages you'd like to learn in the future?
I am sure I'm going to learn Arabic and Kimbundu, because I listen to them very often. my parents speak Kimbundu and I listen to Arabic in the business world everyday.
4. So let's be honest what's the sexiest language?
Being honest I don't know exactly, maybe I'd say Swahili and French, I can't resist when I listen to someone speaking one of these languages!
5. What's the greatest pleasure you get from speaking so many languages?
In my case I think that my greatest pleasure is communicating with someone with different backgrounds, for me it's all about get to know how a German, an Italian, an Angolan or maybe a Chinese think about the world and take every single positive experience as an example, and also learning new things everyday throughout the languages. One of my good experiences was when I was teaching an Indian, so I get to know why Indians don't eat meat, why Indians and Chinese don't have a good relationship and why Indians consider Pakistan as their territory, these are things that I would never know if wasn't a language lover, then it gives me plenty of pleasures.
6. Some people say that the world is really just going to have few languages left in a 100 years, do you think this is true?
Unfortunately that's the reality, for example here in Angola most of the local languages are already been badly preserved and they can be gone within the years, so I think that a language is part on of an entire society and it must be well preserved because it's part of a history of a society.
7. What is your message to young (and not so young) people out there who are interested in studying multiple languages?
My message is for everyone, let's keep learning languages it just have advantages, learning a language is a door that once opened will change your life forever. It's great and you can do extraordinary things when you associate the languages with a certain skill or ability that you already have. Let's do it, let's learn multiple languages!