How many living languages does Ioannis Ikonomou, a translator working for the European Commission, speak?

Ioannis Ikonomou (Greek: Ιωάννης Οικονόμου) was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1964. He is considered to be the most multilingual person in Europe.

He studied linguistics at the University of Thessaloniki in Greece, then a MA in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in the USA. Ikonomou successfully completed a PhD in Indo-European linguistics at Harvard University. The subject of his dissertation in Harvard was a text by Zarathustra written in Avestan, a form of Old Iranian.

In 2002 he returned to Europe to work as a translator for the European Commission in Brussels, where he still works.

Among the more than 2,000 full-time linguists in Brussels, only a few can work in 8 or more of the 24 official EU languages. Ikonomou speaks 21 of the 24 official European Union languages and Estonian, Maltese and Irish are his exceptions.

In all, he speaks 32 living languages which include Greek, English, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Finnish, Danish, Russian, Swahili, Hebrew, Arabic, Mandarin and Bengali.

Reportedly, Ikonomou knows as many as 47 languages including dead languages like Old Church Slavic, Sogdian, Avestan, Ancient Greek, Latin, Ancient Iranian, Ancient Persian, Classical Armenian, Gothic, Ancient Bulgarian, Hittite, and Lubik, which is an ancient Asian language.

He is the only in-house translator of the EC who is trusted to translate classified Chinese documents.