Coded green.

Tuesday 5 September 2006

Screenshot anime Tsuyokiss

Pic of the day: I'm not really into abnormal love (at least not that kind)... rather, a bilingual is one who is fluent in two languages. If you are fluent in even more languages, you are a polyglot, which has nothing to do with gluttony either.

Bilingual

I am bilingual, but I don't understand Spanish. I suspect this statement will make no sense to a number of Americans. In some parts of the USA, immigration from south of the border is so dominant that "bilingual" is becoming another word for "latino".

Indeed, most bilingual people are ethnic minorities in a nation where the official (or at least dominant) language is different from that of their ancestors. Usually we think of immigrants, but they could also be the original inhabitants who were displaced by (usually European) invaders.

A few nations are inherently multicultural. Switzerland, for instance, has four languages regularly spoken within its borders. Not all of these people live in the same canton (state, roughly) so they may not all speak all of the languages, but it is certainly common to understand more than one. Belgium likewise has a French and a Flemish speaking population, and there are obvious benefits to knowing both of the languages. To some extent my native Norway has two official languages too, although they are so closely related that you can easily understand the other unless it is beneath your dignity.

***

If you consider the two official languages of Norway as truly different, then I have been bilingual since I was little. But I am thinking of something else: My gradual adoption of English. Even though I have never been in an English-speaking country, there is just so much literature and so much online communication in the language, I almost certainly spend more time reading and writing English than Norwegian on an average day. (Apart from the typos, I still mess up the prepositions now and then. But then again so do the natives.)

I was thinking about this, and briefly wondering whether I could earn some easy money by translating between Norwegian and English. But in practice that is not realistic. To be an authorized translator you need a special college education, which I probably would not be bothered to take. People don't employ anyone over 45 in a type of job they have never worked in before anyway. Barely even people who have worked with it all their adult life. So it would just be a waste of money.

But even though employers have no idea about it, I have a reason to think that I am indeed one of the rare English / Norwegian bilinguals. Because I pray in both of the languages, and sometimes in the same prayer. So God knows I'm bilingual!


Yesterday <-- This month --> Tomorrow?
One year ago: Nintendo DS
Two years ago: After the rains
Three years ago: M.o.M life magic strategies
Four years ago: Defined by others
Five years ago: Travel
Six years ago: Cracked bells
Seven years ago: What's with Brazil?

Visit the archive page for the older diaries I've put out to pasture.


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