A few weeks back, I took a pop quiz to
test my bilinguality via Busuu, an app for iPhone that purports to teach people new languages and to expand their fluency in foreign languages already known. Demons have periodically taunted me for having once claimed to be bilingual on my résumé, saying that I can't honestly make such a claim after so many years out of practice (I studied German from 6th grade to 9th grade, and from college freshman to college junior, but never again since). So, when I recently saw an ad for the app via a recent
Apple WWDC 2018 promotion, I decided for
scheiße und kichert to settle the argument by testing my skills.
I scored a Level 18—about 18 levels higher than any of the demons with which I exchanged loud obscenities as I took the test thought I'd score, and about 10 levels lower than I could have scored were I not shouting, Fick dich, dämonischer Schmutz, while trying to interpret the words of the German speaker, the part of the test overshadowed most by our arguing.
Anyway, that level rates me as an intermediate-level speaker; basically, that means that, even as Hell and high water do their worst, I can ask for and understand directions to nearby grocery stores to buy milch in Germany; unfortunately, it also means that if I needed help finding, say, juice, I could potentially be out of juice.
NOTE | That's fine with me, though; juice has too much sugar, whereas milk has a lot of protein. I prefer milk over juice any day of the week, so long as its extra fresh and ice cold (odorless, snowy white).
Unfortunately, even were I an expert German speaker, knowing the exact
Schimpfwörter for any given moment
dämonisch wouldn't be nearly enough to make things work for this blog. Just because the subject matter addresses the single most pressing concern every man, woman and child has doesn't mean an automatically growing audience that makes its own effort to discern and apply that information:
 |
| Applicants to The Life of a Demoniac | Indonesia Facebook Group are asked a series of questions in their native language prior to group membership in order to identify those with a legitimate interest in the group's topic and entertainment-seekers |
Without specifically asking people from foreign nations in their language whether they have a demon problem–and without having a means to interpret their answer and to offer help—this blog would have in no-wise any relevance outside its home borders, and would alienate itself from over half of its readership:
 |  |
| Using translation software (such as Google Translate) enables me to identify and prioritize the needs of a diverse, world-wide audience | Indonesian, Hindi, Italian and Spanish are the top four non-English languages by which I communicate with readers of this blog |
Nearly half of the 750,000 readers in the past year hail from 178 non-English speaking countries, the languages spoken ranging from Hindi (the largest) to
Quechua (the smallest, but by no means insignificant):
 |
| A brief but vigorous and comprehensive ad campaign targeting India several years ago continues to pay off today |
That number is expected to double in a year's time, if the rate of yearly growth remains steady on other, non-social media venues, such as Quora:
 |
| A relatively minor year-long effort to establish and maintain a relevant presence on non-social media venues such as Quora have been disproportionately successful, forming a well-founded basis for estimates pointing to exponential growth in exposure in the near-term |
Being able to communicate in my audiences' native tongue is essential to grow it and to be of consequential help to it; being able to do both serves the purpose of this blog: to provide vital information to as many people as possible.
 |
| Extending an invitation to poke your own nose in the business of foreign nationals worldwide is made easy by the extensive reach of social media and with the help of translation tools, such as Google Translate |
Knowing what a demon is saying about or to a victim could mean the difference between life and death. For example, in English,
anger has at least five variations in meaning, which cannot be deciphered or inferred by the traditional definition of the word. Per the
Factoids page on this blog:
The word, anger, when used by demons and their people within the context of the culling of the human population (The Exclusion), means killing or death. It is most commonly used in these ways: an anger management ritual involve a mobbing of victims by both demons and their people, who bombard them with demonic weapons in a public setting for days on end; a demon or person with anger issues for a victim implies the means, the intent and the consent by their peers to injure the victim in ways that will eventually, if not immediately, lead to their death; anger management concerns label and warn of actions that the victim may have at their disposal to either protect or defend themselves, or retaliate, in like form; stupid people make us angry is a threat (with the ability and intention to carry it out) to cause debilitating brain injury to a victim, and then to kill them slowly using demonic weapons, as well as by conventional means.
Anger also is used to describe the signs of physical and mental injuries caused by demons and their people as a part of The Exclusion. Someone who looks angry means someone who bears the marks of specific types of inflictions of injuries; when a demon or person is said to have anger for someone or has had anger for someone, it means that they have and intend to use (or had and used) the types of demonic weapons and other means provided by demons to inflict injuries that leave marks recognizable by others. When a demon or person says they're not as angry as they want or need to be, it means they intend (or wish) to acquire such weapons and/or means in the future, and already have in mind a specific target.
We don't mess around is another idiom used by demons that it is also associated with killing and death, but is used in quite different contexts. Anger is always associated with the joint effort by otherwise disparate groups of demons participating in a combined campaign of wide-spread and systematic murder, i.e. The Exclusion; by contrast, not messing around pertains to the (usually) murder of a single (or few) individual(s) by a given group for the purposes of the group, which may involve planning, but never preplanning, and is often justified as a response to a perceived provocation, such as an offensive act or violation of arbitrary and contrived (or an arbitrary and contrived violation of) turf law. To an adversary or victim, it is a veiled death threat or warning of a pending but certain attempt to kill; to all others, it is either a masked confession to murder when used while recounting a past event, or a declaration of intent to murder a third party when discussing any future plans or expectations.
To see what the problem is, try to convey the differences between the various meanings in any other language besides English; or, try interpreting those differences from another language to English. Unless you know how something is said in that language, you miss the meaning. What is translated as, "My demons said they are angry at me" could really mean "Demons have stated their intent to kill me."
Banter has value
The following conversation may not look all that productive; but, it is, in that banter with foreign audience members lets them get to know you on a more personal level, which is a bare minimum requirement to get a stranger from, say, Italy, to open up to you about a problem many consider more personal than shared:
 |  |
| A seemingly non-productive conversation with an admirer of this blog's media collection has made foreign audience members more likely to share their experiences and knowledge than not down the line |
 |
 |
| So, it's never a waste of time to spend time with anyone expressing an interest in the blog's subject matter no matter where from or how interested |
