26 augustus 2006
The language thing revisted
It was only April 30th this year, that I posted my first contribution in English to this blog. My point was however, that I was writing mainly for a Dutch library community and therefore the language of choice was Dutch. Henk Ellerman sparked this first posting in English, but did not seem to convince me. Since then I continued blogging in Dutch. Even though CW (flexnib) tried to convince to blog in English as well
So why this post in English, and more important my intention to do this more frequently?
A few arguments actually.
One of Henk's arguments holds quite allright. Most of the news comes to us in English anyway. I read it, and sometimes feel the urge to react upon it, but due to the choice for only Dutch as a blogging language I can't really take part in the discussions through blogs since there is a self imposed language barrier.
The honours Walt Crawford gave me with his remark that I blogged in two languages (that remark was based on a single post only) made me think about this matter again.
Vanity? Perhaps the search for a larger audience.
A fellow Dutch Blogger who attended the Ticer Summer School, actually decided to blog in two languages, in response to his discussions with Jenny Levine and Michael Stephen, made me think again.
I know for sure that a Spanish blogger is reading my blog (through Bloglines) as well , and I allways wondered about that as well. Couldn't I do a bit better to make his life easier? Assuming that Bibliometria's understanding of English will be better than Dutch.
On a few occassions I think we (from the Netherlands) can add meaningfully to the international (English) Biblioblogospeher as well.
In both languages I do make mistakes. Spelling, grammar, whatever. I am seemingly dyslectic for whatever I write myself.
In an earlier post I complained about the shortcommings of Blogger. The lack of multiple language support. And that sill holds. So for the English there is only a simple advice: Please do come over and visit when the header is in English. It is probably not worth it to try to follow the Dutch posts.
For my Dutch colleages: Please bear with me on these English posts and keep on to visit my blog as frequently as you did before.
Technorati tags: Languages; Blogging
So why this post in English, and more important my intention to do this more frequently?
A few arguments actually.
One of Henk's arguments holds quite allright. Most of the news comes to us in English anyway. I read it, and sometimes feel the urge to react upon it, but due to the choice for only Dutch as a blogging language I can't really take part in the discussions through blogs since there is a self imposed language barrier.
The honours Walt Crawford gave me with his remark that I blogged in two languages (that remark was based on a single post only) made me think about this matter again.
Vanity? Perhaps the search for a larger audience.
A fellow Dutch Blogger who attended the Ticer Summer School, actually decided to blog in two languages, in response to his discussions with Jenny Levine and Michael Stephen, made me think again.
I know for sure that a Spanish blogger is reading my blog (through Bloglines) as well , and I allways wondered about that as well. Couldn't I do a bit better to make his life easier? Assuming that Bibliometria's understanding of English will be better than Dutch.
On a few occassions I think we (from the Netherlands) can add meaningfully to the international (English) Biblioblogospeher as well.
In both languages I do make mistakes. Spelling, grammar, whatever. I am seemingly dyslectic for whatever I write myself.
In an earlier post I complained about the shortcommings of Blogger. The lack of multiple language support. And that sill holds. So for the English there is only a simple advice: Please do come over and visit when the header is in English. It is probably not worth it to try to follow the Dutch posts.
For my Dutch colleages: Please bear with me on these English posts and keep on to visit my blog as frequently as you did before.
Technorati tags: Languages; Blogging
Comments:
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Hi Wouter, it would be nice to be able to share in the conversation with Dutch colleagues, which is the main reason I've bemoaned the fact that I can't read Dutch. So, thanks for the occasional English language posts :) Still, I do understand the pleasure and ease of writing and reading in one's first language, so I'm glad to see that you won't be neglecting your Dutch-reading audience!
CW
Perth
Western Australia
CW
Perth
Western Australia
If ever you switch to WordPress one day, be sure to check out the plugin I wrote for bilingual bloggers:
http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BasicBilingual
http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/BasicBilingual
Tara, thanks for this advice. I had been thinking about switching for some tim ealready, but his realy helps the argument in favor of WP.
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