Missouri State University professor shares what it’s like to be fluent in five languages.
Vadim Putzu, associate professor of religious studies and Judaism at Missouri State University, speaks and reads five languages: Hebrew, Italian, English, Spanish, and French. He can read an additional three: German, Aramaic, and Latin.
Vadim is a native Italian speaker who was born and raised in Italy. His parents were both travel agents, so they encouraged him to learn other languages and emphasized the importance of being able to connect with others.
When he was young, through his Jewish school and parents, he learned Hebrew, English, Latin, and some Russian. After high school, he took a gap year in Israel with a group of people who taught him French. As a first-generation college student, he got his master’s degree while attending a university in a French-speaking area of Switzerland. Then, he received his doctoral degree in Jewish philosophical and religious thought at Hebrew Union College in Ohio, where he also learned to read German, Aramaic, and some Arabic. For the last ten years, he has taught at Missouri State University and been a part of its study-abroad program in Italy and Israel.
Q| What is your favorite language?
A| Italian is the one that comes natural. It is the language we speak at home with my wife, my daughter, my longtime friends, and other relatives. So I guess there’s something about being able to capture the nuance of a language that comes with Italian. Other languages I know are kind of fun, but you get to a point where maybe you’re not comfortable enough or you feel like you can’t fully express yourself.
Q| What was the hardest language to learn?
A| God, I would have to say Arabic. Arabic has been really challenging. I learned it in graduate school, so I could read the Qur’an and stuff. I had the advantage of already knowing a language in the same family. It is a Semitic language, such as Hebrew; the grammar works in the same way. It’s like if you know Italian, learning Spanish is not that hard because it’s in the same family. Now, Arabic is still really challenging because you have to learn a new alphabet. I started my PhD program in my late 20s—learning a new alphabet in your late 20s is a nightmare. Arabic is millions of words. English has, I think, less than 200,000.
Q| When has knowing another language come to your advantage?
A| When I was young, my father would spend extended periods of time in Moscow. When I was around eight, we were in this big hotel with a huge elevator and a lot of people. I was trying to get back to our room, but I missed the right floor. It’s me left inside the elevator in Russia. So back in those days, you would have an operator inside the elevator. But of course, the operator, even if it’s a hotel, they only speak Russian. I didn’t have a lot of Russian, but I knew numbers. I could count one to 10 in Russian. So, I managed to tell to the operator just a number. And that basically saved me; otherwise, I would have been lost in the hotel.
Q| Why should people learn other languages?
A| Knowing multiple languages and being able to function in multiple languages is an asset, and it can open so many doors professionally. Existentially in somebody’s life, [it allows] them to kind of live in multiple worlds and to know different realities. I wish learning multiple languages was considered more important in this part of the world and country.
This article was originally published in the March/April 2025 issue of Missouri Life.
