Musician Graftsov’s Multilingual Journey: From Latvian and Russian to English, Lithuanian, and Spanish

Graftsov tells host Jānis Šipkēvics that he is half Latvian and half Russian, so he has been speaking both languages ​​since childhood. On the other hand, I managed to learn English thanks to the desire to learn things related to music. “Not classical music, but something else – all the literature was available in English, then, from the age of 15, you just had to study in English, delve deeper, and the other one too – “Cartoon Network” was not dubbed then, it was only shown in English,” he laughs.

For his studies, the musician moved to Lithuania, where he learned the Lithuanian language in a year and a half. “I think that level of language knowledge, when you realize that you know the language, one is when you can tell jokes, the other is when you can talk on the phone, because when you talk on the phone, you don’t have any aids , not with gestures or anything. Therefore, you know the language when you can freely express your thoughts on the phone,” says Graftsov.

The fifth language the musician has learned is Spanish. It happened that in Denmark the musician met his current wife, who is from Spain. One summer, while visiting Spain, the wife’s mother said that she would give Graftsov Spanish lessons. “I basically started talking after one summer,” says the musician. “If you want to enter that niche or the local market, you want to have some close friends in that other place, you still need to speak that language, even if it’s wrong, people open up to you much more.”

You can listen to the full recording of the program here!

2023-12-19 22:02:37


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