I'm back home! And before I start blabbering about my trip, I have to say something.

( Lots of whining )

Usually when I write in either French or Chinese--wait, scratch that, when I attempt--I open up another Word document, because compared to writing in those other two languages, English is a breeze. Analogy: because I'm far better in English than any other language (which, to be honest, I feel kind of bad about), it always feels like I'm trying to ( Read more... )

Cross-posted to bookish

( Read more... )

Bill C-232 is now up for debate in the Senate. This bill, which can be searched for by Google would make it mandatory for Supreme Court justices to be bilingual.

In case you don't know, Quebec is one of the provinces, and they speak French (technically, Quebecois, since their version of French is not quite the same as Parisian French anymore). ( Read more... )

This a poem by Reid, published in 1963 and taken out of An Introduction to Poetry, 8th edition, by Kennedy, X and Gioia, D (1994), HarperCollins.

Speaking a Foreign Language
Alastair Reid

How clumsy on the tongue, these acquired idioms,
after the innuendos of our own. How far
we are from foreigners, what faith
we rest in one sentence, hoping a smile will ( Read more... )