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

As a child, I was forced to speak English by my immigrant parents, who couldn’t speak it properly themselves, while attending a French primary school in Australia. My parents’ native languages were considered useless and not worth learning. I had fallen into the trap of believing that English was more important and was left traumatized for not speaking my heritage languages well. However, I did manage to pick up a lot of Croatian through my classmates at school.

In my early 20s, after speaking perfect English and fairly fluent French, I embarked on the seemingly impossible journey of learning Cantonese in Hong Kong, which was truly the first foreign language I studied meticulously. As the months went by, I dedicated at least 1-2 hours per day to my studies, but I soon realized, from the blank stares given by people trying to figure out if I meant “water” or “bad,” that I still sounded like an out-of-tune guitar. So, I took the initiative to change my personality, if I was going to speak Chinese, I had to become Chinese. This was the key to mastering Chinese: simply doing so much of it that I had no choice but to improve. I set huge targets, memorized massive word lists through audio repetition, and eventually gave up on learning the written language due to the time commitment required. After a few years, my proficiency reached the point where people thought I had grown up in Hong Kong.

After more than 10 years, I moved to Thailand, it was relatively easy to get conversational in Thai. The mental fears that it is impossible to learn a language didn’t exist after mastering Cantonese. Once you learn the hardest, every other language is easy.

I moved to Ukraine, where decided the only effective way to master Russian would be the same way that I used for Cantonese. That is, "more" and "sooner" would generate faster results. I wanted to speak it now, not later. I couldn’t bear to miss out on potential friendships and opportunities simply because of laziness.  I took an eight-hour-per-day, six-month, one-on-one intensive course. I actually cried once or twice, struggling to understand the impossible grammar. I had lived many years there; my Russian became fluent and I was no longer seen as a potential English speaker for people to practice with; I became a "local."

Then I took up Croatian as a side project to impress my dad. No matter what I did or said, he would criticize me and speak English back to me. It made me so angry, I packed my bags and moved to Croatia to master the language. It wasn’t hard to get good at Croatian—it was always with me—I just needed the feedback I never received as a child.

From there, I moved to Germany and embarked on an all-day, every-day German study adventure. I continuously took intensive classes at the Goethe-Institut, repeated the same course with another private school in the afternoons, and did four hours of iTalki per day. Within a year, I could speak at a C1 level, and I still strive to reach C2.

I’ve taken intensive courses for both Italian and Spanish, sticking to the familiar eight-hour-per-day study plan. However, it has become increasingly difficult to make time to maintain languages. I avoid and rarely use English. With all the languages, the maintenance demands and the ever so impossible task to fit in more hours, lead me to set priorities and assign a specific language to a regular task or activity. Though the number 1 question that I get asked, is "do you even work?" I work on dual monitors and have Youtube or Glossika mass sentence repetitions blasting on 1 screen while I work away on another screen.

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

I have discovered that the more intensive I learn a language, the more progress I make. The languages I don’t use often are the ones that suffer in fluency, even if I used them for many years and at one point exclusively in my life. German is the one that I am most fond of, and making friends in Germany seems to be as difficult as learning the language itself. I wish I could pick up the language simply because I am surrounded by it, but in the reality, it takes someone to speak the language with and the challenge is always finding those people to begin with.

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

I would love to master Italian to a B2 level, but every language I dedicate extensive time to, makes it ever more difficult to find time to do other things in my life.

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

Of course, French. No matter how much I try to convince myself German is.

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

When I have the language spoken back to me as if I was local. No simplification and no slowness. I feel satisfied that I am one of them, I have integrated.

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?

In 100 years, I reckon the world will speak English, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian and French. Though the opposite might happen where languages become over-protected and become forced or only used by certain countries. I see a hybrid English created where non-standard accents or incorrect grammar become normalised.

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

Learn to get motivated, learn much, and do it in the shortest time period possible. 1000 hours in 6 months is far better than 2000 hours over 6 years.  Learn the techniques, be disciplined, and learn as much as possible, as soon as possible. In my opinion, focus on sentence patterns through stories, memorise more vocabulary and spend less time on grammar. I never did my homework or fill-in-the-gap exercises. The key is boring brute force repetition, and to find a tutor who provides real-time feedback. I usually do short intensive bursts for 1 language and put others on maintenance mode. No matter what, the hours have to be put in, and being able to effectively use the language sooner is better than using it ‘one day’ 6 years later simply because the time put in was spread over a longer period or shared with other languages.