Now without a knowledge of at least one foreign language (preferably English), lives as something not quite comfortable.
People who know two or three foreign languages, not so rare, however, at the same time, the cause of all the unconditional respect and wistfully. Ioannis Oikonomou free of such manifestations. The official languages of the European Union considered 23 languages, but in the arsenal of 48-year-old Ioannis, the chief interpreter of the European Parliament, there are many more - 32 pieces.
In the European Parliament Oikonomou works more than 15 years, and deals not only with simultaneous translation, but the translation of complex legal texts. Native to the polyglot is Greek, but in six years, he began to study English, then German (possessed him to seven years), Italian (was "taken" in ten), Russian and others. Each was given a new language easier to previous ones, and as a result Ioannis mastered 32 languages, including rare and dead - Latin, Sanskrit, Irish, ancient Persian, while the translator emphasizes that it is not going to stop there: he plans to learn more and Ethiopian .
Answering the question, what is his secret, Ioannis says his technique is not merely memorizing words and grammatical rules, and in the study of culture and traditions of the country: for example, he said, it is impossible to speak in Greek, not fall in love with Cypriot beaches and drinking tart wine.