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

I grew up already learning French and English since they are official languages in Nigeria. Tiv is my mother tongue and Hausa was widely used where I grew up. I later learned Latin in secondary school, this helped me understand a good amount of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. The more I could understand the more I was lured into learning and then I started other languages, like Chinese, Arabic, etc.

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

Currently, Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Korean, Japanese, Arabic.

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

I hope to stop the addiction of learning new languages for now.

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

French and Italian.

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

The ability to have privacy/secrecy with what I am saying. Being sure that nobody except the person I talk to understands me.

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 think yes - languages without study materials and few native speakers who are not working to put the language in study materials may be lost.

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

Learning languages will help you design the map of your life. This can also determine your fate, where you go, opportunities of jobs you have and kind of friends you have.