The demise of my mother tongue

-Not to be confused with my mothers tongue...which I believe is in perfect condition.

It has come to my attention that I am slowly and painfully losing what was once known as my native language. Ever since I spent my eventful and highly interesting year abroad (more specifically the land of fat people and hamburgers), Ive had problems with the Norwegian language. I keep forgetting the most elementary grammar and spelling, and find myself writing English words in my otherwise Norwegian sentences at lectures. Of course it doesn’t help that the PowerPoint presentations are written in English, but the professor tends to speak Norwegian. -Well except for the Scottish dude we had a week or two ago who couldn’t pronounce the letter P without making fart noises with his lips. It was hard to concentrate on the subject matter, and I honestly don’t think I can remember anything of those two lectures.

But today I hit rock bottom. I was attending a Norwegian ecology lecture with English slides. I was being a good student, taking notes and trying to hear through the mumbling of the professor, when I tried to write a sentence that included the Norwegian word for pocket gopher. Of course it would have been a lot easier and quicker for me to just copy the slide and write “pocket gopher”, but I decided to write it in Norwegian: “Mulvarp”. I was staring at this word and thought to myself that something was wrong with it…but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. It wasn’t until my friend, who was sitting next to me, pointed out the missing “d” in the word that I realized I had spelled it wrong. He then proceeded to ask me if I was dyslexic. -Which I have never been, but was silently wishing for at that moment. Now, if you are English and reading this, you are probably wondering what the big deal is by spelling a word wrong. But the thing is; this is a word Ive known the spelling of for years and years…ever since I was a little girl watching cartoons with the little pocket gopher and his buddy Tiger. I realized at that moment that I have to do something. I am not exactly sure what that something is, but it has to be done. I have had too many incidents like this one the past 6 months to just ignore it. How to change this trend though, is to me a mystery. I am reading novels in English these days, my University textbooks are written in English, slides at lectures are in English, most of my emails are in English (except for the ones to my Norwegian friends of course), this blog is English, the movies I watch are English/American, so are all the TV shows…Am I losing my ability to communicate with my fellow countrymen/women? The thought is frightening.

I guess if it gets any worse, I can always move back to the States…