Thursday, January 17, 2008

World shrinks a tad

9:21: CC gets an email from the office administrator at her firm who has e-mailed the entire firm to ask if anybody knows somebody who speaks Ukranian.

9:23: CC emails LinguistFriend.

9:33: CC emails office manager, saying "I know someone who probably speaks Ukranian. Lemme check"

9:35: CC calls LinguistFriend at home. LF says his Ukranian speech isn't that great, though he can read it when he has to. CC says "Ok" and rings off.

9:37: LinguistFriend calls CC back to point out that every Ukranian LF has ever met is bilingual in Russian*. CC thanks LF, rings off again.

9:41: CC calls office manager, explains about the Russian. Office manager says she has just heard from another attorney who used to work with a guy who speaks Ukranian. She thanks CC, but says she will probably go with the other translator, who is an attorney.

An email to a medium-sized law firm yields two Ukranian translators in twenty minutes.

I heart globalization.

CC

*Russian is LF's favorite language. LF is AWESOME in Russian.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, at least the spelling is phonetic.... (in Russian).

LinguistFriend said...

Actually, Russian spelling is based on the principle of maintaining the basic forms of meaningful units (morphemes) as much as possible (linguists call it morphophonemic), rather than of trancribing sounds (phonetic). In Russian (and Ukrainian), a Ukrainian is a ukrainec, with an [i].
When I got married, my wife was surprised to learn that I
talked in my sleep in Russian.
Nowadays, of course, the surprise would be that that was a surprise
by the time we got married. But that was long ago, and in another country.

Comrade Kevin said...

Uh. I speak Spanish, badly? Does that count? *grins*