Novak Djokovic isn't just good at swinging the racquet he's also capable of some word swinging being fluent in several languages.
As cool as being fluent in Serbian is due to the wonders of triple diphthongs, it won't get you very far in the world. It's only spoken natively by less than 10 million people. Due to that, Djokovic opted to learn a few more languages as it would be very beneficial to his tennis career as a global sport.
Being able to speak Italian, English, French, and other languages allows him to conduct post-match interviews in several languages. He's far more confident in his Italian than French but he's been giving the effort to do the post-match interview at the 2023 Roland Garros in French. He did it with Marion Bartoli after the win over Juan Pablo Varillas as well and after the match, he explained his reasoning behind it.
I don't think you'll hear "allez, "because I normally kind of encourage myself in my own language, as I have done throughout my career. I think it's a question of respect. It's a matter of respect --sorry -- when you are in a particular country to try to speak the language of that country. I think it actually, you know, allows you also to get closer to the people in a way for people to really respect you more as well. It's a kind of mutual respect. That's how I see it.
An interest in languages is as old as his interest in tennis and having had the opportunity to train in Germany from a young age allowed him to pick up that language as well as English. He then learned Italian later on by training in Italy and a bit of French and Spanish too along the way.
As his level of tennis rises this year in Paris so should his French skills, especially if he continues to hold the post-match talks in French.
I was always attracted to languages from a very young age, and because I was training in Germany, had German, English in school, and then learned Italian pretty quickly. French, decent Spanish, as well. So I think the more languages that you speak, I guess the more, yeah, respect you're going to get, the more value you will get from the relationships with people, just from your experience in a given country.
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