I was told rather early that I had a knack for English. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I learned to read early, and then proceeded to steal my brother and sister's video cassettes and watched Jaws and other movies I probably shouldn't have seen at all at the age of 7 or 8. I'm convinced that I learned English by watching foreign movies subtitled in Norwegian. The past 5 years I've been reading books, watching movie's and tv-shows, and listening to audio books in English. And since I do still play World of Warcraft, I write (and occasionally talk) a lot in this language. Lately it's become so bad that my brain actually forms sentences in English which I then have to translate into Norwegian when talking to other people online. And since I've done nothing else but watch Top Gear the past week, my internal voice now sounds like a British middle-aged nutter who says "oh, cock" a lot.
But I do have some problems with the English language. Some specific words, actually. The first one I'd like to point out is "grin". To me, that act of "grinning" really doesn't sound like a friendly, happy smile. It sounds like what a dog does when it blot it's teeth, or when someones makes an angry face. It just doesn't sound happy!
Another one is "snogging". Just try the word out, slowly. "Snogging". This does -not- sound like the word to describe affectionate, passionate, long term kissing. It could be used as a .. threat. "Watch it or I'll snog your face off!". Or like a word used to describe jogging in snow. Snowjogging. Snogging. See? Logic.But it's not a romantic word.
I realize that it probably isn't the brightest idea to have a go at this particular language, since it's fairly popular and used by quite a few people. In my defense these are more specific, British words. And the words are just wrong. Replace them, please. Not that I think anyone would. But that's me, ambitious but rubbish.
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