Tibor Sekelj languages spoken, written or signed Serbo-Croatian
Biography
Youth 1912–1939
Sekelj's father served as a veterinarian in the Austro-Hungarian Army and as a result the family moved around extensively. Several months after Tibor's birth the family moved to Cenei (now in Romania), where Tibor lived until he was ten years old. While Hungarian was his "mother tongue", the commonly spoken language was German. Sekelj had at least two sisters and a brother, Antonije, who later collaborated with him on several books. In 1922, the family settled in Kikinda, part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now in Serbia), where Tibor learned Serbo-Croatian. He also studied French and soon was teaching it to his fellow students. Sekelj went on to learn a new language every four years. In 1926 his family moved to Nikšić (now in Montenegro), where he took up gym, mountaineering and where he walked the entire length of Montenegro.  In 1929 he entered the University of Zagreb (in Croatia) and in 1933 was one of the three youngest students to have graduated from the school of law.  During that time Tibor also studied painting, sculpture, Esperanto, filmmaking and journalism.  But the practice of law bored him, and he turned his attention to writing. He began working as a journalist in Zagreb. In 1937 he started to work in Zagreb as a film screenwriter. In 1982, in Leuven, Belgium, at the World Youth Esperanto Conference, he discussed his Sephardic Jewish ancestry with Neil Blonstein.Polyglot
Sekelj learned 25 languages and countless dialects, of which he retained nine at the end of his life: Hungarian, Serbian, German, Esperanto, Italian, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese.  Of these he wrote extensively in Spanish, Esperanto and the Serbo-Croatian, He was an interpreter on his travels and as part of his work for PIF during acceptances, arrangements etc.
linguistic abilities language proficiency language command