Learning a language means much more than mastering its grammar and vocabulary. It is understanding a nation’s culture and values. Federico Fellini realised this when he said “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

I’ve always been interested in languages ever since I realized I was bilingual speaking the English of my father and the Italian of my mother. I was late, however, and didn’t utter a word in either language until I was four. I then retained speech impediment, a stammer, until well into my teens.

At school, I was able to use my knowledge of Italian to learn another romance language, French. However, with the root of these languages, Latin, I failed miserably. I don’t quite know why but perhaps it’s because I only want to learn languages that are spoken today. I wished to do German at school but my parents encouraged me to take up ancient Greek but, again, I didn’t take to it at all and left the class after only one term.

I added a further language when I spent two years in India in my early twenties. I enjoyed Hindi with its logically laid out alphabet and its Devanagari script.

In 1990 I began learning Welsh at an evening class at London’s City Lit as we looked after a holiday cottage in Powys at the time. My wife and I also attended courses in Welsh at Nant Gwrtheyrn, the centre for endangered languages in Gwynneth and Gregynog, the University of Wales gorgeous country retreat. I remain always amazed at the number of Welsh words that are so close to Italian that it cannot be a coincidence. For example, Welsh-Italian-English: credu=credi=believe, pont=ponte=bridge, the days of the week Wednesday=Mercoledi=Mercher etc.

Languages must be regularly used if they are to be remembered and a few years ago I realised that while my knowledge of Italian was increasing, because I now lived in that country, my Hindi was deteriorating and my Welsh was veering towards an utter blank. Without unduly advertising it, however, I latched onto Duolingo. Of course, such a language app can only help if one also uses textbooks and has a person one can talk to in the language. Textbooks in Hindi and Welsh I do have but it’s been more difficult to find their speakers. Luckily I’ve found at least one Hindi speaker and neighbours from Wales who among their visitors have a Welsh language teacher.

Learning a language means finding the time to learn it and a proper routine. My timetable now is as follows. Sunday French. Monday German. Tuesday Hindi Wednesday Latin. Saturday Welsh. What about Thursday and Friday? Add another language? My wife who is an interpreter by profession had started studying Russian and as for me it was from the beginning I decided to reserve two days for Russian. So this Slavonic language now  has Thursday and Friday devoted to it.

When do I have my language lessons? In the morning usually in bed before I get up. In that way, there are fewer distractions and less chance of throwing away my 375 days uninterrupted streak. Now it would be terrible if that happened! Above all the most important reason for learning a language is to keep the brain cells active. Chess might do, even Sudoku. but languages are  a much more practical and useful way to spend one’s free time: learning another language really does expand one’s universe and is like becoming another person.