>>199 The Italian thing is curious since he has been consistent about his level in French (intermediate I'd say) and Spanish (low intermediate, he says he understands more than he speaks). In Italian he says "Io parlo italiano però.." and I think he wanted to add something in Italian but words failed him and he moved forward. Maybe he was trying to impress.

Latin and Greek surely can help guessing some words meaning, but Italian is completely different language, so I'd say tourist level is probably right for him.

But his answer in that podcast is interesting because maybe he remembered saying differently and decided to be accurate to avoid confusion. Whether it's because he can't complain about lies being said about him and then be ambiguous, or because he decided to stop trying to impress people it's difficult to say.