Dear all,
This will be a brief post just to give you an introduction to the following blog. It is about the one thing that gives us the opportunity to plan and explain, to mold reality, to lie and cheat, but it also gives us a medium to create something beautiful. It is of course, language. From maths to the dying languages of unnamed tribes, language gives us complex forms of communication, in speech, reading and in writing. However, language is a complex thing in and of itself. There is no universality – unless you count mathematics – no one language that all people speak. How do you avoid getting lost in translation? Which languages should you learn to speak? Should we follow the United States and speak the English we see in series and movies? Is there a better option? What about multilingualism: can all the languages a single person speaks be equal? What does it mean to be a native speaker? There are so many questions to be asked and answered. More than you could think of while reading this brief post.
The purpose of this blog is to find some possible answers to these questions and more. With this comes a slight warning: not all posts will be in British English. A Scottish dialect, Doric, might be used, as well as Dutch, and Flemish. It is entirely possible that combinations of these languages will make up the composition of one, or more, of the following blog posts. I do hope I will not lose you in translation.
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash