On speaking different languages

I am now officially Bilingual. I have a new linguistic skill that can go on my CV, opening doorways to new business ventures.

I launched the latest Stilus adventure last week, providing blog writing services for SMEs. It has started to take off, which is truly fantastic. The only hurdle to achieving customer satisfaction was that I had to learn to write in a new language for two of my new customers…

…American.

What’s all that about? Color? HUH? I have been realizing that communicating in this way adds new…color…to my writing. I have to go back and delete all the ‘U’s and ‘S’s from my words, replacing them with ‘Z’s. Hmm.

Thanks to Bill Gates and his Word package, this is much easier than it may sound. If I need to write in a US accent, all I have to do is default to ‘normal’ in Microsoft Word and let it correct all my typing errors. This is ironic, because for the last four or five years I’ve been swearing at my laptop, adding words such as ‘customise’ and ‘humour’ to the dictionary, which defaults as a matter of course to US English, and I’ve never learned to make a permanent switch.

I’m loving it. I like getting to know people’s writing styles, and emulating them. Some people write with LOTS of emphasis AND exclamation marks!!!

Others prefer very short sentences.

I feel as if I’ve stumbled upon the best job in the world. And it’s mine. Happy days! And yes, when I typed that, I conjured up an image of the Fonz in some American diner, too. This new US consciousness is going to have an interesting effect on my thought processes, over the next few weeks! Gonna have. Whatever.