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

I was born in Portugal in 1976, and my parents had just returned from Angola, so that may have been the beginning of my journey: open-minded parents who believed the world to be more than “just” our lovely Portugal. I learned English at school early on, and my love for basketball got me reading magazines about the NBA in Spanish (language at a receptive language for any open-minded Portuguese, but I was 9 y/o when I first got exposed to it), and of course watching regularly NBA games in Spanish language at such an early age, got me to a communicational level.

Later, I did my Masters in Barcelona and decided to totally polish Spanish, and on the way, learned Catalan too, as I got a job as an interpreter at the busiest police station in Spain, els Mossos d´Esquadra de Ciutat Vella. So, here are four easy ones for someone who has a romance language as L1: Portuguese, English, Spanish and Catalan. Before I went to Barcelona to do my masters, I did an Erasmus program in Finland and I was loving learning such a difficult language (those 15 declinations, oufff), but falling in love with a Czech girl there, abruptly shifted my energy into learning Czech, which I did towards a professional level. What love does to you, right? The wind took the relationship, but the language stayed. And since she was a Russian teacher, she taught me to read and write in Cyrillic.

Remember the job at the police station? Well, I happened to write Russian basic level on my CV when I delivered it to my boss who hired me, and she decided to add the Russian flag to my name card. How naughty was that, knowing I only had a basic level? I had two choices: 1) Ask her to remove the Russian flag from my card, please. Or 2) leave the flag and find the first language school and start learning Russian, twice a week for two years. You know which option I took. So, we can add Czech (as I call it, my Slavic mother tongue) and Russian to the list.

Since I was at that language school, I decided to brush up my French also there, which I also had learnt at school. Do you want to throw Slovak in there as well? Humm, it would be as fair as to add Galician so let us keep those two out of the list for now. I did learn Serbian to a communicational level, and I was communicating only in Serbian and in Croatian when I visited those two countries, but that was 15 years ago and rust has its way to get installed. 

Back to the police station: After 3 years working there shifting languages every day, I learned the brain elasticity to communicate in around 15 languages daily – but about thefts only - it was a police station after all. After I finished my master’s, I did a Leonardo DaVinci program in south Italy with the sole intent to purify my knowledge of Italian, which I did. So, we have Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French (all romance languages but Romanian, language that I also studied, but never got to use), English, Czech and Russian. 

Then I moved to China. I arrived to Macao in 2010 and I had to make a choice: Mandarin or the locally spoken Cantonese. Of course I chose both. But with higher emphasis in Mandarin (language that I speak, read and write), being that my Cantonese could be said to be at a communicational level, but please do not go far from daily life subjects. I also studied Japanese for 2 years, but quite frankly, despite being able to say a few cute things, for me to add it to the list, I would need 2 more years working on it, and since my beautiful wife is Indonesian, I shifted the energy towards Indonesian, language that I can communicate in. Oh, and Malaysian too if you feel like stretching it, but here we go again, we are not counting Galician nor Slovak so let us keep it out. 

I forgot to say that I was living in Prague for two years and I managed to negotiate with my German boss free English classes to all company´s employees in exchange for her hiring a private German teacher to teach me for free. But to be fair, I make way too many mistakes in German to count it in. So, let us see and be honest. At a proficient level I have Portuguese, Spanish and English. And then I can communicate also in Catalan, French, Italian, Czech, Russian, Mandarin, Cantonese and Indonesian. Give me a couple of beers and that list may increase significantly… Moreover, I graduated in Psychology in Lisbon, did a master’s in music therapy (Music is also a language – change my mind) in Spain, and I have a Ph.D. in Multilingual Education, achieved here in Macao.

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

Since I have three amazing daughters (13, 11 and 8 y/o) and one fantastic 8 months old son, and I put parenthood on the top of my priorities; while considering I also need to spend a lot of time working, this is a difficult question to answer. But essentially all of them.

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

Apart from those languages that I actually speak, I would like to improve my German, Finnish, Romanian, Serbian, and Japanese. And Kiswahili, since I was in Kenya visting my sister  with my parents and there I was learning it too.

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

It has to be Italian.

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

Well, I´m not a kid anymore. While it used to be great to impress girls 20 years ago, now I genuinely have great pleasure in helping others believing themselves and breaking social myths. And of course, being able to order beer in over 20 languages.

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?

The Great Union or the Great Clash. I am no futurologist (I have friends who are), but I hope for a Great Union of Cultures, but with many languages being spoken.

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

You are your own limit. If you believe you can learn only one language at the time, then you will learn only one language. If you believe you can learn five, six or more languages, it can be done. First you need to set it as a high priority in your life. You also need to find your “why”, because the journey is going to be bumpy, and it is your “why” that will get you through. Then, you need to understand there will be confusion and translanguaging, and accept it as part of the process. And above all, have a lot of fun while learning!