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

My passion for languages began in middle school when I was 11 years old and took up Spanish for the first time. Luckily, my teacher was incredible, and I became deeply passionate about it, which led me to continue studying Spanish in high school. Back then, I wasn’t really fond of English, but since it was a compulsory subject, I had no choice but to study it. I decided to attend a language-focused high school where three languages were taught: English (by default), then I obviously chose Spanish, and for the third, I had to choose between German, French, or Russian. After some consideration, I went with German. At first, I didn’t like German either and thought I’d made a mistake choosing that school. However, in my later years, I realized the problem wasn’t the languages themselves, but the teachers (this applied to both English and German). Once the teachers changed, I began to enjoy both subjects a lot more. In university, I continued studying languages and had to choose two primary ones. I knew Spanish would be one of them, and to “complete” my linguistic knowledge of the Iberian Peninsula and South America, I chose Portuguese. During my Bachelor's degree, I also took a free-choice course in Catalan.

At that time, I started exploring how to self-learn languages without a class, course, or teacher, experimenting with different approaches and techniques for various languages that piqued my curiosity. This led me to start learning Russian on my own (although I'm still at a basic level).

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

I really enjoyed learning Portuguese—it always makes me happy when I speak it. Unfortunately, after completing my Bachelor's degree, I haven’t had many opportunities to practice it, but I’d love to use it more.

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

To be honest, I have a long list of languages I’d like to learn in the future—currently, there are about 30 of them, ranging from Germanic and Slavic languages to Asian and African ones. To be more realistic and specific, some languages I’m considering learning in the near future are Greek, Icelandic, and Thai.

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

Spanish, hands down. When I first discovered this language, I fell in love with it. Even now, when I hear people speaking it, I just enjoy the way it sounds.

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

The greatest pleasure is seeing the amazement on people’s faces when I’m able to communicate with them in their own language—it feels almost magical. I see learning a language as an opportunity to connect with different cultures and meet new people. It's not just about the language itself; it's tied to how people perceive reality. So, the more languages you learn, the more you grow as a person.

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?

From one perspective, there are countries with very restrictive language policies,which seek to limit the use of minority languages in favor of a dominant one. This makes us think that within a few decades, many smaller language groups will become extinct, which is certainly a problem. On the other hand, I feel like there’s growing awareness of this issue today, and more interest in preserving endangered languages. In fact, many people are encouraging, sharing, and learning these languages, which gives me hope. I’m optimistic.

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

Don’t be afraid of being judged. In Italy, many people avoid speaking a foreign language because they’re scared of making mistakes, and even if they know the language, they hold back out of fear. My message is: don’t care about that, just speak! Every language is a key to a new world that you wouldn’t discover otherwise.