So, I was watching some old UFC highlights the other day, you know, just chilling. Got to some Khabib Nurmagomedov clips, the guy’s a legend, right? And it got me thinking during one of his post-fight interviews – he’s talking, sounds kinda like Russian, then switches to English, pretty decent English too. And I just got curious, like, how many languages does this dude actually speak?
Naturally, the first thing I did was grab my phone and just type it in. You know how it is. “What languages does Khabib speak?” Simple enough, I thought. But man, the internet gives you a bunch of stuff right away. Some places just listed a couple, others seemed to add more. It wasn’t super clear cut.
I figured, okay, let’s try to see for myself. I started looking up more interviews, press conferences, stuff like that. Watched a few from different times, different places. You can definitely pick out the main ones pretty easy.
My Little Investigation
First off, Avar. That’s his native language, from Dagestan where he grew up. You don’t hear it as much in the big international press stuff, obviously, but I found clips where he’s speaking it, sounds totally different. Makes sense, it’s his mother tongue.
Then there’s Russian. That one’s obvious. He uses it a lot, especially when speaking to Russian media or fans. Seems totally fluent, which isn’t surprising given where he’s from.
English is the other big one you hear constantly in the UFC and international interviews. His English got way better over the years, you could tell. He worked on it, clearly. Enough to get his point across, trash talk a bit, you know the deal.
Now, here’s where my simple search got more interesting. I saw mentions of other languages. People online were saying he speaks some Arabic. I watched a few clips where he uses Arabic phrases, especially religious ones, which makes sense given his faith. How fluent he is? Hard for me to tell, I don’t speak Arabic. But he definitely knows some, uses it in specific contexts.
I also saw Turkish pop up in discussions. Apparently, he’s picked some up? Maybe due to similarities with other regional languages or just exposure. Again, couldn’t really verify the fluency level myself just by watching a couple of videos, but it was mentioned often enough that I noted it down.
So, What Did I Land On?
After poking around, watching interviews, and reading bits and pieces on forums and articles, here’s the list I kinda settled on based on what I could gather:
- Avar (Native)
- Russian (Fluent)
- English (Fluent enough for interviews/business)
- Arabic (Seems to know some, particularly for religious reasons)
- Turkish (Possibly knows some)
So yeah, that was my little rabbit hole for the evening. Started with just watching fight highlights and ended up trying to piece together Khabib’s language skills. It’s pretty impressive, honestly. Going from your native tongue to Russian and then adding English well enough to be a global superstar takes work. The Arabic and Turkish bits are interesting extras. Just goes to show, these athletes often have more going on than just what you see in the octagon.
