Re: English and its influence on other languages (was: Re: Aboutlinguistic (in)tolerance)

Orjan Johansen wrote:

> On Sun, 28 Mar 1999, Tom Wier wrote:
>
> > Orjan Johansen wrote:
> >
> > > Who's pretending?  It happens frighteningly often that I can only r=
emember
> > > the English word for something but not the Norwegian one.  Although=
 I
> > > think the opposite still happens more commonly.  Of course it depen=
ds
> > > heavily on the subject matter.
> >
> > Wow -- it's that bad?  What percentage of the Norwegian population
> > can speak English fluently?  I think I can perhaps grasp why so many
> > Scandinavians and Hollanders worry about the future of their language=
...
>
> Oh, don't worry, it's just me spending far too much time on the Interne=
t.

I can see a point here... I've found myself reading bits in Englsih or Sw=
edish,
understanding enough of those bits but being unable to translate them int=
o
Spanish... sometimes because there is not direct translation (the domain =
of the
foreign word is not quite the same of any Spanish counterpart) sime times=
 because
I don't know the word in Spanish (afterall I read a good amount of techni=
cal stuff
in English first, not to mention culture specific terms) but many times w=
hat
happens is that I have temporally forgotten the Spanish word... even when=
 it is
quite a common word.

I'f found myself switching language like changing enviroments in my mind,=
 when I'm
into the Englsih enviroment I forget my active Spanish.  I remeber taking=
 English
courses in Sweden, whith Swedish classmates and Swedish teacher, the clas=
ses where
supossed to be totally  in English but Swedish wasn't forbiden and many t=
imes
either the teacher or any of my classmates would ask me in Swedish, I rem=
ember I
had not truble understanding the question but when I wanted to answer my =
mind
didn't find the way, because it was switchen into English but after the q=
uestion
where in Swedish my mind was aimed to answer in Swedish and all that beca=
me a
mess.

I wonder if anybody has been in this conjuncture before.

>
>
> Greetings,
> =D8rjan, sleepless in Trondheim.



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