A boy genius of 10 has stunned teachers by learning to speak 10 languages. Arpan Sharma taught himself French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swahili, Mandarin, Polish, Thai and the difficult Lugandan language of Uganda. He also learned Hindi from his mum and dad. The gifted primary school pupil from Oldbury, West Midlands, UK studied using CD-ROMs. He learnt Italian fluently at seven, German at eight and Spanish when he was nine. But he admitted: “Learning Swahili was probably one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced, whilst Mandarin Chinese was hard too.” Arpan wants to be a surgeon and work in hospitals abroad and speak each country’s tongue.