Wanted: Master of the Belgian language

Google invents lingua novo

By Tracey Cooper • Get more from this author

Posted in Music and Media, 21st August 2006 11:45 GMT

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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 dialects - with three official languages and a number of regional tongues - but so far no one has been successful 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. ®