W.G. Sebald, who emigrated to England when he was in his 20s, but continued to write in German until his death in 2001, on living between two languages:
[O]n bad days you don’t trust yourself, either in your first or your second language, and so you feel like a complete halfwit.
I know precisely what he meant because migrating between different programming languages/operating environments can and does engender very similar feelings. You;re a half-wit on the new language of course, but there is a kind of bleed-through into the older skills which can also make one fel kike a half-wit.
To my mind perhaps the most impressive literary feat of all time was that of Joseph Conrad, who was born in Poland, emigrated to the UK as a young man, and wound up writing great imperishable fiction in a language he learned as an adult.
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I know precisely what he meant because migrating between different programming languages/operating environments can and does engender very similar feelings. You;re a half-wit on the new language of course, but there is a kind of bleed-through into the older skills which can also make one fel kike a half-wit.
To my mind perhaps the most impressive literary feat of all time was that of Joseph Conrad, who was born in Poland, emigrated to the UK as a young man, and wound up writing great imperishable fiction in a language he learned as an adult.
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Another thing which can make one feel half-witty comes from the deplorabel habit of committing comments on blogs without proofreading (see comment abover for a prime example of the practice).. 😉
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Another thing which can make one feel half-witty comes from the deplorabel habit of committing comments on blogs without proofreading (see comment abover for a prime example of the practice).. 😉
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