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

Language and its use triggered my interest at a very early stage of my life. Growing up in a mountain region in the South of Austria, with a strong Tyrolean dialect, I was confronted with the standard German that German and Viennese tourists spoke, being obviously the language with a higher prestige in comparison to our local dialect. I remember well – at the age of 4, 5 – to imitate the tourists’ language and identify the differences to the local dialect.

Early access to English through family members – an aunt had married a British soldier after WW II -, and success in imitating accents and dialects spurred my interest in language, as I strongly sensed its great social relevance and symbolic power. I learned English, Latin and Ancient Greek in a classical secondary school in Austria – enjoyed all of it -, but then came a decisive moment of basically falling in love with Italy and Italian. As a school group we had gone to Frascati, near Rome, which was an overwhelming experience in the best sense. Beauty was all around – the landscapes, the architecture, the people, the food, and … the language. So, upon return, I decided to study Italian on my own, solely with the help of an Italian language learning book (this was long before the Internet). When - after 1,5 years of enthusiastic learning - we went back to Italy, I could understand and speak it well enough to get things done and to even serve as interpreter. An experience that transformed my understanding of what I could do with languages.

At the university, parallel to my legal studies, I got into languages learning – Spanish, French, Portuguese. Each year, a new one. A 9-months journey through Latin America in 1988 helped me progress greatly in Spanish and Portuguese. The great luck was that I could use the languages I mentioned (with the exception of Italian) for my work as a human rights consultant, doing trainings and workshops in Brazil (a lot), in Argentina and Uruguay, also in Morrocco and Tunisia.

Work in the region of the former Yugoslavia and in Turkey has led to a basic knowledge of Bosnian-Croation-Serbian and Turkish. Wherever I go, I learn at least the 30-50 most important words in the local language. It is simply fun for me and, very helpful. Ancient Greek and Latin are still important in my language life; I continue to see their worth and beauty as foundational for most of the languages I speak.

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

Living in Vienna, a multilingual city, and my job as an internationally oriented human rights consultant gives me quite some opportunity to practice my languages. But I would certainly want to practice/improve my basic Bosnian-Croation-Serbian and Turkish, both of which are spoken widely here as immigrants’ languages.

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

In addition to improving Bosnian-Croation-Serbian and Turkish, I would love to learn Modern Greek and Russian.

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

My transformative encounter with Italian has never lost its charm—it remains special to me to this day. But Brazilian Portuguese comes very close.

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

There is this great Turkish saying: “Bir dil bir insan”, “One language, one person”. Every language gives me the opportunity to express a different facet of my personality, of who I am. And that is - pure joy. Obviously, every language also gives me the opportunity to understand reality/realities better - from multiple linguistic perspectives. And it is simply helpful to connect with people in a more profound way.

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 am not that pessimistic, also because I see the efforts to preserve languages, including through new technological means. And there is this field of “linguistic human rights”, which defends the rights of minority language speakers and combats linguistic discrimination. These trends give me hope.

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

The key message is: Go for it. - It is useful, it is fun, and it is good for the world. I am deeply convinced that multilingualism is relevant to dealing with the daunting challenges that humanity is facing. It has the potential of fostering empathy, understanding, and cooperation across cultural differences and borders.