Rants and raves

I occasionally get this question "how many languages do you speak?" to which the answer is two, as it is for 43% of the world's population. Another 17% speak three or more languages fluently, so my skill is not a rare one. Admittedly, the percentage of bilingual or multilingual people is lower in the US, even in California, but it is still high. Over a quarter of the California population is fluent in English and Spanish, and many also speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Korean, Persian, Hindi, Arabic, Armenian, or Russian. Over 40% of Californians speak a language other than English at home, and there are over 200 languages spoken in the state. My native language is spoken by only about 0.32% of the world's population and doesn't make the list in California, so the fact that I'm bilingual is a simple combination of roots and necessity.  What makes the question a bit awkward is the implied self-deprecation or deprecation of people who speak only on...

I started off today wanting to give a tutorial on simple tricks to make the English of non-primary speakers sound more authentic. You know, basic stuff like diction and articulation. Don't pronounce "Volkswagen" as "Wolksvagen," understand that "bed" and "bet" and "bid" and "bit" and "bad" and "bat" all sound very different, and don't randomly throw in interjections like "hè" or "eh" that are natural in one language but sound weird and completely out of place in another. All triggered by an observation that people from Denmark seem to speak excellent, albeit very distinct, non-native English, compared to the Dutch, who seem to wing it well but are sloppy. But that's for another time. Many people confuse fluent with native, first language with primary language, and accent with dialect, frequently under the illusion that there is such a thing as a standard or proper version of ...