But i want also get in touch with the other side of the chain – pointing to the moment when you re writing. Maybe this is only my opinion, because it is based on observation and deep thoughts. But what changes when you are blogging in foreign language. Are there any changes in what you want to express or are able to express? Can you reach the same level of depth in you thoughts or expression? Or is this only a question of practice and training? Is it really? Sometimes writing posts in my mother-tongue allows me to use a much more variety in style, form, narration. So related to this thought – how to deal this with my students if I would reccoment writing in a foreign language of their choice. So what’s the change if you switch or have to. What will you loose, what will you win?

And the third thing – to be hinest i learned by observation from Cristina – what can change my view of the world learning to enjoy the existence of many languages? And what of this can be brought into topics named by such big words than literacy.

My 2 cents so it would be nice to see more such as interesting as enriching statements like from Nergiz.

The language problem can be dealt with by learning some of the most common languages on the web. Translation tools are also becoming more and more sophisticated. They will probably never replace human translators but can be of great help for someone who knows the topic of a text to figure out what the author is saying. I’ve recently read that Google is working on a translator project but can’t find the link right now.
Today, in Second Life, I used a translator that translates between 22 languages. I was able to chat with someone from China. The conversation made sense so it seems to work fine.

Actually, the language „problem“ is not new, we are only more aware of it now because the Internet has made it much easier to connect individuals to the world and the world to individuals. If you go to a newspaper agents or Zeitungskiosk in a Germany city, you will find newspapers in many languages. You normally buy the one written in your first language except if you want to practise another language or in a rare case that the information (news) you are looking for is only available in that foreign language.

Which language you use on your blog or on social networking sites is not an easy question. I think groups often have one common language. A local group will have their language and an international group most probably English.
I have chosen English for my blogs to reach a wider audience and because I teach English.

One problem I have is with my business blog/website. I want visitors to be able to choose between three languages but this is not an easy task (I use WordPress as CMS). I could also blog in three languages and use categories but I think this is not good for search machines and might also be confusing and not obvious for visitors with little Internet experience.

These are my thoughts. It will be interesting to see what happens to languages on the Internet. Some years ago, many people thought that English would be the only language that will survive on the Internet, this did not turn out to be true.

Nergiz