User:Tollef Salemann

Hi!

I speak fluently Trøndersk Norwegian with some Russian accent, and Russian with Norwegian accent. Ever since I've learned how to read, I was fascinated by languages, probably because of my family origin, which comes from multiethnical areas of Mordovia, Siberia and Bashkortostan. Although my family was very poor, allready in the primary school I had a huge collection of dictionaries and grammars of different languages (especially nice ones in Bulgarian, Hebrew, Ukrainian and Old Church Slavonic). After that my family managed to move abroad, I grew up in Trøndelag (Norway) and Dalarna (Sweden). In later times I have worked as a blacksmith, punk-musician and glassblower in many areas of Scandinavia, such as Telemark, Hordaland, Småland and Gästrikland, and got a big interest for Scandinavian dialects, as well as languages spoken by my colleagues (especially languages of Africa). I also really enjoy to study pidgin languages and the languages of the Arctic region. Besides all of that, I have an academical degree (bachelor) about use of runes and secret languages in Norwegian magical tradition from 1500-1800 CE, and have a one-year university study of history and philosophy.

Det er ikkje på jorði tvo, som talar det same mål There ain't even a pair of people on the earth who are talking the same language

A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot (Maks Vaynraykh)

In a comic stripe from 1919, two years after the Russian Revolution, a Bolshevik asks a Norwegian: "Wut are ya'll arguing about in Norway nowadays? Is it the revolution?" The Norwegian's answering: "No, we're arguing 'bout how to spell the word revolution"