ABSTRACT
The author draws on his/her lived experiences as a cultural commuter in order to reflect on instances of linguistic inequality and injustice that she/he has seen both in partly forgotten yesteryears and in the current years of the 21st century. The author's mother was German. Father was Norwegian. The author's parents decided that their children should be brought up bilingually. When the author was 19, he/she got a one-year scholarship to Stanford University. They shared rooms with the American students, were exposed to their culture, their dating practices, their slang and table manners. The author attended both undergraduate and graduate classes and mostly got Bs in the undergraduate classes and As in several of the graduate classes. From 1988 to 1992, the author was a Professor of education at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. These years formed a steep learning curve and sent the author through several intellectual shocks.
