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ome childhood impressions last. One of such with profound implications was a picture of the language tree in my mother's Introduction To Linguistics.

The picture suggested that languages were alive, just like plants they could grow, whither, die and then come alive again. They could cross-pollinate, blossom and bear fruit. My young fascinated mind wandered away thinking of all ramifications and possibilities of this theory.

In the phrasebook my Grandpa presented me German, English, French and Italian words captioned pictures. I noticed that sometimes words were similar and the similarities seemed to follow some rules. Figuring them out - with some adult help - turned out more fun than schmoozing with snivelly peers in the sandpit.

Thus was born my passion for languages. At six, I became engrossed in watching Belorussian TV and reading fairy tales in Belorussian. It was an exciting puzzle of mostly faintly familiar and often altogether obscure words. Making sense out of it provided a never-ending entertainment.

The same year, prompted by bilingual signposts in Latvia, I discovered that Russian could be written in Latin script. I completely took to the idea, much to my mother's horror - I was to start school next year and there would be no good grades for using Romanised transcription.

I began to learn English at about the same time and my linguistic qeust started slowly but surely to gather momentum. One thing was leading to another: I studied English from Russian textbooks, but when I majored in Japanese at university we learnt Japanese via English (until the end of the second year when we got onlly native teachers). In Thailand where I spent 6 years, best Thai textbooks were Japanese-made. That came in handy at my evening job in a Thai-Japanese joint venture, where I was busy bridging cultures and working ethics. I still remember the bewilderment when the first page of a Sanskrit textbook made sense to me: I recognized lots of words that Thais use like we use Latin and Greek.

My language tree kept branching out: I figured the rules of thumb of reading Japanese characters the Chinese way. My first student summer job was at a Swiss-Austrian company where all meetings were connducted in German - I had no choice but to keep up. Life in Southeast Asia exposed me to Cantonese, Teochew and Hokkienese - Southern Chinese dialects. One month of hitch-hiking in Bulgaria opened my eyes to the fact that local newspapers sound very much like very formal archaic written Russian. Shop signs in Romania made a lot of sense thanks to my smattering of Latin as did Sinic restaurant names in Hanoi. Speaking Laotian only took adjusting Thai tones differently and remembering a couple of hundreds new words.

In Holland, thanks to my German background I guessed the answers in my placement test and ended up straight in an intermediate course. My first ever Dutch class was about Suffrage in the Netherlands, quite a departure from the regular "is this a pen? no, it's a pencil" grind. In just half a year, my teacher Camil Crone almost single-handedly drummed ten thousand Dutch words and a full course of grammar, writing and reading analysis into my head. And as if by magic, Flemish and Afrikaans also started making sense.

The old saw has it that it becomes a cinch after the 6th language. Even more so when there is pressure for survival. Driving in the Argentine countryside or working in an all-Thai office did not leave much choice as I personally find using body language to explain myself embarassing. Three weeks of independent travel in China did more to my Mandarin than a year of formal classes. I could have fights with waiters (an unfortunate necesity at times) and haggle at souks like a professional in Morocco thanks to a crush course of ninety Pimsleur French lessons. But I am most proud of how I could communicate with our Hungarian landlady and buy tickets in Budapest with just a phrasebook!

The fact that producing sounds in certain combinations conveys to people an infinite variety of ideas, facts and emotions is an ever-lasting kick for me. World languages use up the whole paradigm of all possible word orders and sounds, yet what we say is pretty much the same wherever you go. The bromide that we all are just humans, one species, never mind the race, language or creed dawns on you as a slow epiphany as you as the odd sounds people make in foreign lands start making sense to you.

Still, the differences between us make it so fascinating. Every new language gives you a different angle of view, a flat picture of trite stereotypes about the world begins to evolve into a colour-rich three-dimensional wonder that it truly is.