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

I’m not exactly sure how it all started. I just remember that, when I was a teenager, I suddenly became really interested in other cultures, different ways of life, and, naturally, their languages. My mother used to buy me a German course that came out every week with a newspaper, so I started learning German when I was quite young. Over the years, I also occasionally took classes in Russian, Chinese, French, and other languages.

I’ve always loved hearing different languages and imagining that one day I might get to know the cultures behind them. For me, languages are deeply connected to the people and cultures that speak them, and that’s probably why learning a language often ends up with me making friends from those places.

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

I think the two languages I’d most like to spend more time practising are Basque and Modern Greek. Basque is particularly challenging because its grammar is so different from most other languages I know, and it takes a lot of practice to speak it confidently. Even after studying it for three years, I still don’t feel completely comfortable when I speak.

Greek, on the other hand, has always been one of my favourite languages. I love the way it sounds, and I’ve always found its alphabet fascinating and exotic. So those are probably the two I’d most like to practise right now, although I’m also studying European Portuguese, and I’d definitely like to spend a bit more time on that one too.

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

Mandarin Chinese is probably the language I have the most unfinished business with. I studied it years ago, but I never became fluent, so I’d love to go back to it one day and finally get rid of that feeling that I never really managed to learn it.

I’d also love to learn Moroccan Arabic. Morocco is very close to Spain and there are many Moroccans living here, and I’ve never studied a Semitic language, so I think it would be fascinating. I also occasionally fantasise about learning languages like Japanese or Indonesian. Realistically, because I work and study, I probably won’t have time to learn them all — but somehow they’re always there in the background, tempting me!

4. So let’s be honest, which language has the most charm for you?

I’m really fascinated by Chinese. For a Spanish speaker, being able to speak Chinese almost feels like having a superpower, and I find the whole system of tones quite mysterious. Of the languages I already speak reasonably well, though, Basque is probably my favourite at the moment. Its structure is so radically different from Indo-European languages that learning and speaking it feels like a real cognitive journey.

Greek also has a special charm for me. Whenever I see it written, its alphabet makes it look almost magical, and I love the culture and history surrounding the language. And there are other languages that fascinate me for very specific reasons — for example, I love the sound of European Portuguese, whose phonetics can sometimes sound surprisingly closer to Russian than to Spanish.

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

Perhaps the greatest pleasure is feeling, even if only for a moment, that I’m part of another culture. Speaking the language gives me access to a little piece of reality that I might otherwise never experience. I remember being in a traditional restaurant surrounded entirely by Greeks, listening to them play music and talk, and having them speak to me almost as if I were Greek too. Moments like that genuinely fill my heart.

People are actually a fundamental part of language learning for me. I love travelling to visit friends and speaking their language, and through those friendships I’ve discovered things about places like Romania or Italy that I would probably never have known otherwise. For me, learning a language is deeply connected to socialising with native speakers, travelling, taking courses and doing language exchanges. It’s much more than just learning grammar and rules.

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 it’s more than just an opinion — it’s already happening. Many languages are disappearing as a result of globalisation, while major languages such as English, Spanish and French dominate social media and international communication. This can make it harder for minority languages to be passed on to younger generations, and they may also lose social prestige. So yes, I’m fairly realistic about it: I think many languages spoken by small communities could disappear over the next hundred years.

At the same time, I don’t think this process is inevitable. Languages can survive when their communities actively organise to protect and promote their language and culture, and social media can actually become a useful tool for that. Basque is a good example of a language that has survived despite enormous pressure, and Hebrew is an extraordinary example of language revival. Unfortunately, these success stories are not the norm, and minority languages without strong community and institutional support are clearly much more vulnerable.

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

Learning languages is an exciting adventure, and nowadays you can find incredible resources without spending much money. There’s so much available online, and you can also do language exchanges with people from all over the world. More importantly, languages open an extraordinary door to other cultures and to people’s hearts. Along the way, you may make friends who stay with you for the rest of your life, even if you don’t get to see them very often.

For me, every language is a key that unlocks another culture and another way of seeing the world. So my message to young — and not so young — people would simply be: start the adventure. You never know where it might take you.