On 5/2/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
One of the best writers of English on the projects is
Erik Müller, a
German. His English is much better than the average English speaker and
indeed much better than even a lot of Wikipedians.
Even so, I will rarely notice him writing something that doesn't sound
quite right. Usually this is not quite an _error_ but just some kind of
_oddness_. His English is German-flavored.
The worst thing about it is that I'm speaking and using English so
much that it's taking a toll on my German. Whenever I speak at a
conference in Germany, people later come up to me, with a slightly
confused look, and ask me: "That was very interesting, Mr. Möller, but
I have just one last question. Where are you _originally_ from?"
The Brits tell me I sound American, the Germans tell me I sound like a
foreigner, and the Americans tell me I'm "German flavored". And you
still didn't get the umlaut right, you insensitive clod! ;-) It's
Möller, not Müller. Unless you were talking about some other guy, in
which case you can disregard this posting. ;-)
Erik