Wanted: Master of the Belgian language
Google invents lingua novo
By
Tracey Cooper
Published Monday 21st August 2006 11:45 GMT
Those sales reps that were excitedly reading down Google's job advertisement for a possie at its Dublin headquarters thinking "oooh yes, I can do that", "mmmm, standing on my head", would have sighed in disgust at the last line of the
job description - the successful candidate should be able to "speak and write Belgian and English fluently and idiomatically".
Hmmmm, Belgian.
Now, we know Belgium's got quite a list of languages - with three official dialects and a number of
regional tongues - but no one has been successful yet in linguistically unifying the country.
But if anyone's going to do it, Google's the only contender, with a well-documented history of attempting to reconfigure the world - what with its
shifting of the Greenwich Meridian,
erasing of Malta, and
mislaying of Tibet.
So its latest foray into the vernacular comes as little surprise.
We're just wondering how many applicants will send in their CV anyway, covering letter proudly boasting of their verbal and written mastery of said language. We'll keep you posted. ®
