Winthers Weblog is another Danish weblog written in Danish. It contains a selective list of Danish weblogs - divided into Danish language blogs and Danish blogs in English (last species of writers are under observation;)). One post claims that 60-70% of the Danish weblogs are in fact in English - a throught-provoking observation and an interesting discussion concordingly unfolds in the comments.
Well, Winther, I write in English, because I reach a larger audience this way (especially some international colleagues who cannot read Danish) and definitely also because I want to practice writing in English: my thesis has to be written in English and I have to keep in shape, basically. I'm sorry if my English to some Danish readers "rings hollow", but I'm afraid my Danish is even worse. For that reason it sure would be a good idea to run a Danish language blog on the side to practice my Danish language skills - if I had more time at hand. But I don't and I am pretty comfortable with this language, at the same time as I like the fact that more and more people are actually starting up blogs written in Danish. From a general point of view, it _is_ important to prevent the language of the net from turning into English (and Spanish,Chinese and Japanese) only and to cultivate the smaller national languages also in this medium. But personally, I think it is content that matters, not form (though I know it is difficult to separate these two) - and to me the main question is whether people write about something worth writing about, not which language they choose to do it in. A point might be made more precisely, eloquently or detailed in someone's native language, but in the long run even the seductiveness of a beautiful style cannot make up for an inherently inane content, IMHO.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 02:39