Lingo time

Why I am blogging in English, when it's not even my native language? I'm Norwegian through and through, at least where language is concerned. But I speak, read, listen to and write Norwegian every day, so I hardly need to practice it more than that. English, on the other hand, is something I need to practice to keep my brain tuned in to it.

Some people will tell you that English is pretty much second nature to Norwegians. That is a rather grand overstatement. Most Norwegians younger than 45 will now SOME English, as they got it taught in school from age 10. Quite a few of those younger than 35 will speak pretty good English, but have a harder time reading it, not to speak of writing it. These days, English is taught from day One in school, which hopefully will make good English speakers out of more Norwegians. At least, we hope they will be better than infamous Norwenglish speakers like Kåre Willoch (ex-Prime Minister who greeted the US on "Good Morning, America" back in the early 80s with "Good day!"), Erik Solheim, Jens Stoltenberg (our current PM) and Nils Arne Eggen (Norway's most successful football (yep, still "soccer" to you Americans) coach).

As for me, I did ok in English at school, I guess, but didn't start finding it very useful until I was about 14. Then I got myself my first computer! Back in 1985, that was a pretty big deal over here...still got it stowed away in the basement...hmmm...I wonder if any of those games still work...?

Anyway, owning that computer meant that I needed to read up a bit on how it worked and stuff (meaning games reviews), so I started buying computer magazines. At the time, they were almost exclusively in English, and for us Amstrad users, there was only ONE magazine available - in English, of course. So, with determination and a dictionary, my basic vocabulary grew pretty rapidly.

Back when I was about 19, I finally started reading novels, and quickly found that quite often works that were translated from English into Norwegian lost a lot of their flavour during translation. Since then, I've pretty much insisted on reading books in their original language if I am able to read it (which basically means if they're not written in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English, I'll need to find a translation into one of those languages).

So, for about 18 years, I've made a point of always reading at least ONE book in English at any given time (I'm usually in the process of reading two or three books pretty much all the time - no, NOT simultaneously!). I try to go abroad for about a month every year so I practice speaking English, but I also need to practice writing it. That's one of the main reasons why this blog has come into being, but also as a teacher of English, I need to keep the English clockwork in my brain greased and ticking.

So. If I make any glaring errors, please point them out to me. Please, be nice about it, though.