If English is your Second Language, What Language do you blog in?

That is the title of a post on ProBlogger today.  It jogged my memory of a session at the Cambodian Bloggers Summit, "Is It Better To Blog in English or Khmer?"  David Saski took great notes that day, but wanted to pull out his points on that session:

Later in the day there was a debate between Javier Solá and Preetam Rai (moderated by John Weeks) about whether it is better to blog in Khmer or English. Here is the case for both sides, bulleted:

Why blog in English:

• You can also blog in your own language, but when you blog in English, you’re sharing your lives and your community with the entire world.
• It provides important information
• You are making Cambodia more visible on Google and you are portraying Cambodia from a local’s perspective rather than a foreigner’s perspective.
• English is more search engine friendly - more online software is available in English than Khmer.
• Bloggers in Cambodia can connect with their relatives who live in the USA and other countries.

Why blog in Khmer:

• Blogging is about communication. When you are blogging you are trying to communicate something.
• You are writing to a targeted audience and you should speak the language of that audience.
• Do you want to be read by a lot of people all over the world or a specific group of people in your community?
• Are you trying to reach the 1 or 2% of Cambodians who speak English or all Cambodians who can access a computer?
• As it is, there is an over-abundance of information on the web in English, but there is a lack of content on the web in Khmer and you can help change that.
• Your language has your culture in it. Language and culture go together. So if you are trying to communicate with other Cambodians, you are limiting yourself if you do it in English.

Comments

[koyan]

First, one note:
"Bloggers in Cambodia can connect with their relatives who live in the USA and other countries."
That is not necessarily an advantage of blogging in english: Most of your Cambodian relatives will be able to read Khmer.

Our blog is in Greek and given that it is a family diary, most of its audience is relatives who live far away from us (named: USA and Australia). But they read and write greek.

Now, answering your question.

Personally: When I started blogging I did it in english, to communicate with colleagues and friends who were not greek. No matter how easy it is to think and write in an other language though, it is always easier to write in your own. So at some point I abandoned english and started writing greek.

In general: it all has to do with the needs that your blog is covering for you. If it is covering your need to show the images of your babies to their grandparents who do not speak english, then you stick to your language. If your blog is about usage of new media in your country you probably stick to your language. If your blog is about usage of a specific technology, you may go with an other language. There are a lot of different criteria, and we each weight them differently.

[Kaj Rietberg]

It depends on wich people you want to reach with your blog. I want to reach Dutch people that's why I write in Dutch. But soemtimes I want to reach other people then I write in English.
On the moment I'm trying out translation machine for the k12conference. Because a lot of people would like to read the information in their own language because they understand it better, for me it is the same. That's why I have a translation machine on my blog. It is on the upper right on my blog and gives a translation in English. I hope to hear if the translation is understandable.

[Paolo Ferrara]

Well done Beth. Personally I'm writing my blogs in Italian for several reasons: english is not so common and well known in Italy; writing in my own language is easyer than writing in another language and I can put more infos and comments; first of all, the culture of fundraising and internet fundraising in Italy is not so developed and I think it's better to communicate for the italian people in our native language to improve the knowledge of fundraising (but everyone can read posts in English through my links and my blogroll).
Thank you Beth

[vutha]

it is true, it depends on bloggers whether what language they want to write in blog. For Khmer language is different from others at the present time because it is hard for Cambodian to read Khmer if their computer is not installed Khmer font. For me, I chose to blog in English it is because i do not only Cambodians to read my blog but also foreigner to do as well. And i want to improve my language. it is not time for me to blog in Khmer at the present time. it is later.

[zylla3]

I was introduced to blogging due to necessity, and I need to reach a wider audience. Besides, I would probably make more spelling and grammatical mistakes (as also true in English, 75% of the errors--using this loosely--are committed in writing rather than speaking) in Pilipino, not that it would matter with the advent of the cell phone texting mania invading the blogging world.