1. What’s your story? How did you get into all these languages?
I always wanted to learn a lot of languages, and I knew I could make  that dream come true if I moved abroad. So I moved to Britain and then  to France when I turned 18—and then I just never stopped. Later, I studied Russian at a French university. I like a challenge, I get bored when things are too easy.

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

3. What are some languages you’d like to learn in the future?
Getting better at languages I've already started always takes precedence  for me. I have a solid foundation in Urdu and Swahili, so I might take  one of those to another level in the coming years. I'm also interested  in studying minority languages, although I harbour no illusions of  becoming truly fluent in them. I've studied Tatar, Nenets, and Northern  Sami in the past. Why not Greenlandic, Hadza, or Amis next?

4. So let’s be honest: which language has the most charm for you?
Once you use a language every day, it becomes ordinary and loses its sex  appeal. If I think of a language as sexy, I'm definitely not fluent in  it. Swahili sounds very soft and sensual to my ears—probably because I  associate it with someone I once dated. Maybe Vietnamese can sound  insanely hot too; I just haven’t met that person yet (if you’re  Vietnamese, insanely hot, and between the ages of 30 and 40, please  apply).

5. What’s the greatest pleasure you get from speaking so many languages?
I volunteer as an interpreter for refugees imprisoned in deportation  centres. I love speaking to Kurds, Iranians, and Afghans—not only  because I admire them as people, but also because it makes me feel like  I'm doing something worthwhile.

6. Some people say the world will really only have a few languages left in 100 years. Do you think that’s true?
Of course not. Drastic numerical decline in speakers can happen very  fast, even within a single generation, but the complete extinction of  that many languages is highly unlikely. It’s true that people often  become aware of the cultural heritage their mother tongue represents  just a little too late. However, there's now a growing awareness around  the globe that languages are cultural artefacts—and that humanity is  richer for each and every one of them. Indigenous peoples are putting up  a fight, and revitalisation movements for endangered languages have  sprung up with the help of linguists. While many small languages will  die, we’ll still be looking at a four-digit number a hundred years from  now.

7. What is your message to young (and not-so-young) people out there who are interested in studying multiple languages?
If you're in high school and have the option to take Latin, go for it. I  had five years of Latin, and it prepared me for learning other  languages—even totally unrelated ones—like nothing else. I became  familiar with a grammar so complex that everything that came after  seemed easy in comparison. When I come across a particularly convoluted  sentence in Turkish or Persian today (two languages whose syntax can be  fiendishly tricky), I still rely on the sentence-parsing techniques I  learnt when studying Latin.

Being a polyglot is not just an intellectual endeavour that runs as a  subplot through your life—it becomes your main plot. You don't just  live the life you'd live anyway and then also speak those  languages. Your entire life becomes shaped by travel and by making  friends with people from the right backgrounds. All those foreign  cultures become part of you in the process, and you’ll end up feeling at  least a little bit torn between all these different identities.