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

I have always been interested in history, geography and languages, I have family in Germany, so I took on an interest for learning languages through German. The connection I’ve developed through languages with other people motivates me to keep learning more.

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

Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, … I have troubles practicing speaking these languages because most people who speak those languages already know English, and they insist on switching to English if you are not fluent in those languages.

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

Icelandic, Kazakh, Turkish, Japanese, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Portuguese, Italian.

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

In my personal opinion, either Spanish or Russian. Probably Spanish, depending on context.

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

The ability to gain different perspectives from people that one would never get to see if one didn’t speak their language, I travelled a lot and I have had experiences change from awkward and slightly hostile to friendly and open because I spoke their native language. I once was in a taxi, and the driver didn’t know English, but I didn’t ask what languages he spoke and I noticed that I spoke his language when I heard his Google Maps navigator voice, so we had a conversation. I would have never had with him if I didn’t know that language.

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 with the emergence of technology and AI our methods of communication will be severely altered maybe even rendering language useless, hopefully not. There is also another future where new languages are formed by AI, or we even create a global language to communicate easily. I do believe certain languages will be simplified, so more people can learn them. For example, Chinese has changed over the years from traditional to simplified to make it easy; if Chinese switched to pinyin instead of Hanzi it would be easier for people familiar with Latin scripts to learn this language, that’s just one possible scenario for the evolution of language in the future.

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

Languages build relationships and bridges; people respect the ones who take the time to learn a language. Most people feel more comfortable conversing in their own native tongue as opposed to having to translate into another language. Sometimes it’s better to listen to the perspective of someone you do not know in their own language: most people will eventually learn English or Chinese, but their true soul and expression lies in the mother tongue. So, it’s important to preserve the language, history and culture of everyone, as long as we can as a reminder that we are just people who come from all walks of life. It’s not our differences that are abundant, but the similarities we deny or fail to acknowledge that are ubiquitous throughout our civilization. We share more in common, more than what makes us different, the same goes for languages.