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

When I first started studying languages at school (English, French, Spanish) I wasn’t very good at them. This changed, after I went on a school exchange to Australia and decided that I wanted to go travelling again after school.

In 2006 I went to South America for the first time and started to improve my Spanish. I fell in love with that corner of the world and have since then spent around five years in total in Latin America.

I ended up studying American English and Latin American Studies. During my M.A. I studied in Brazil for a year, adding Brazilian Portuguese to my languages. While living in southern Brazil I also had Guaraní classes for two semesters.

After finishing university, I continued to improve my Spanish and Portuguese and occasionally also came back to learning bits and pieces of Guaraní. It took me a few years to realize how much I miss learning new languages. I signed up for classes in three different languages. Thanks to that I found out that I still didn’t enjoy traditional teaching methods and that I also still disliked sitting in a language class with other students. I didn’t finish any of these courses and also didn’t want to continue any of the languages I had just started.

The language bug finally bit me when I had to “go home” from my last journey through South America, a trip I had to end due to the beginning of the Covid pandemic. At the time I had been cycling South America for 15 months. I actually didn’t have a home to go back to, because I had quit my job, apartment and sold pretty much everything before leaving Germany. However, I still had to swap my freedom of living in a tent and cycling all day long against a small room, sitting inside 24/7. Not being on the move anymore made me feel miserable. I urgently needed a distraction and decided I would try to learn a new language - once again. This time I didn’t want to attend classes anymore. I eventually started studying Scottish Gaelic and fell in love with the language. It was the best distraction I could have imagined! I have been studying the language almost daily since that day.

I had so much fun studying a language outside of class, that I soon also started studying Dutch and Norwegian.

Since then, I’ve learned bits and pieces of other languages out of pure curiosity and occasionally came back to others that I had tried over the time. I only added Italian last year. Before going on a vacation to Sicily I wanted to find out how much of the language I could learn within the roughly eight weeks which I had left until my holiday. That small challenge was surprisingly successful, very likely due to the similarities with other Romance languages. Since I had already made so much progress, I didn’t want to stop learning the language after returning home.

This summer I wanted to find out more about the differences between the Goidelic and the Brythonic branch of Celtic languages and wasn’t satisfied with the amount of information I found online. Starting to learn Welsh myself seemed to be the best solution. I’m glad I did, because I really enjoy studying that language.

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

All of them!

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

Seriously restarting Guaraní or learning one of the native languages from Latin America that I had some contact with during my studies or travels (K’iche’, Quechua, Kuna or Classical Náhuatl) is still very high on my list. I also want to learn more Plattdüütsch (Low German), the language my great grandmother spoke to me when I was a kid (I never really learned the language though).

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

Scottish Gaelic!

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

They say that every language opens a new door, and I believe this to be the truth. One of my greatest pleasures related to languages has always been to connect with others. There are so many moments that I remember dearly which I wouldn’t have experienced without speaking - or at least making an effort to speak - another language, especially while travelling.

Different languages allow us to think and express ourselves differently, adding new perspectives to our worldview. Speaking other languages is also a wonderful way for me to learn more about countries, regional differences, culture, history, cuisine and so much more.

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?

Although unfortunately languages die at a concerning rate, I believe this estimate to be a bit too pessimistic. I’d say we probably end up with around 5000 languages by then. This would still mean losing over 2000 of the languages that are still alive today.

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

Make your learning journey fun! Find out which learning techniques work best for you and try to choose study materials and topics that you’re interested in.