Multi-lingual journalist whose Ukraine reporting went viral responds to huge reaction

A journalist whose multilingual report about the escalating situation in Ukraine went viral has responded to his newfound fame.

Philip Crowther, an international affiliate correspondent for The Associated Press, attracted the attention of the internet earlier this week when he posted a montage of him speaking about new developments in Ukraine in six languages.

Crowther kept audiences informed about the escalating crisis in English, Luxembourgish, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German and it made for pretty impressive viewing indeed.

Now, on an appearance on US show Dan Abrams Live, he has responded to the reaction and explained just how he knows so many languages.

Crowther said he made the video himself and has made videos like it a few times before to showcase his language skills. But while the traction on this particular video was "slow" at first, it soon ramped up.

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"It's always interesting to see where these things travel and who picks up on it.

"It's been a pretty relentless few days at least when you look at my phone. It's been vibrating rather a lot, a lot of notifications but I'm not complaining."

He added that the reaction he has got has been "positive" and he hasn't seen "too many snarky comments".

"I'm grateful for it, it's a nice thing to experience, it's going viral I think for the right reasons, there are a lot of people commenting on the fact that they'd like to maybe learn another language seeing what they saw in that video, there's a lot of really nice respect from colleagues in our industry."

Crowther grew up in Luxembourg with an English father and a German mother, he explained. He was taught French in school and then "developed a passion for Spanish". When he decided to "add Portuguese" he made it to six languages, but some of them are easier than others.

"There are some languages where my vocabulary is a little bit more limited," he said.

"It's every correspondents fear to end up without the words you need to talk about what you've just seen and I just hope everytime it doesn't happen to me."

As for if he speaks any other languages: "I could maybe do something in Catalan," he said. "That's pretty much it."

Seems like a lot to us.

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