The language thing

Lately I’ve been thinking about how this blog could have been quite different, if I’d chosen to write in either Malay or Chinese instead of English. Certainly my readership would be very different! Writing in English means that many more people can read your blog, but writing in a language other than English does mean that you are making a contribution to readers of that language. (I wonder, are there any Malaysian librarians blogging, and do they blog in Malay?) I had a very brief conversation with a Dutch librarian some months ago, and he said that he had chosen to blog in Dutch:

Sometimes I consider to blog bilingually, but there are already so many English Biblioblogs, that adding just another hardly makes sence. In the Dutch biblioblogsphere there are only a few blogs.

I think that’s a good point.

Writing in Malay would have novelty value for me, in that I seldom do it now, although I still read Malay and Indonesian novels whenever I find them in the public library. I was quite chuffed to find that I can still write in Malay. It wasn’t even difficult! Perhaps I should do it a bit more often. If I got my act together I could even provide translations (thanks for translating yesterday’s post, Mooiness!). I used to read a blog whose author provided posts in both English and Polish (I think it was Polish). I enjoyed his posts, and although I don’t speak or read Polish, I enjoyed looking at the two different languages onscreen.

Sun is shining. I close my eyes and underneath my eyelids I see a shiny spot. Tomorrow, it will be a tedium of everyday. The same, heavy and laden, everyday. I will be everywhere and nowhere.
Today is bright.

Slonce swieci. Zamykam oczy i pod powiekami widze swietlista plame. Jutro bedzie codziennosc. Ta sama ciezka, olowiana codziennosc. Bede wszedzie i nigdzie.
Ale dzis jest jasno.

(I think he’s stopped writing his blog, but I’ve saved it in Bloglines and I can still see a few of his posts.)

The Malay language blogosphere is quite sizeable, and there are a number of bloggers writing in Malay whose writings I enjoy, like Garam Gula (Lit. “Salt sugar”, or “Salty sweet”) and Jiwa Rasa (“Soul feeling”). There are lots of Malaysian bloggers blogging in English too, though! And recently I’ve been in contact with a Malaysian writer, Uthaya Sankar SB, whose writings I found online some years ago. Recently while I was in Malaysia I saw him on morning tv presenting a commentary on the day’s newspapers – and I’ve since discovered that he’s just started blogging. (Quite coincidentally, Uthaya Sankar had emailed me and suggested that I could blog in Malay from time to time, while I was writing yesterday’s post!)

Writing in Chinese, on the other hand, would be a real challenge, because I am very much still at the learner stage when it comes to writing in the language, and each post would probably take hours of painstaking dictionary consultation. Blogging is great writing practice, though, and it would probably be good for my language skills to blog in Malay and Chinese from time to time.

Categories: language, blogging