blogging: June 2003 Archives

Blogging often consists of short passages, it goes with the format. Blogs are also often written in an easy, everyday language. These two things makes them perfect for practising another language.

I think that's why I enjoy reading blogs in German so much!

For me, it's hard work reading a book in German. If I want to understand everything, which I usually want, I must have a dictionary nearby. This excludes reading on the way to work or in other situations when you just have a couple of minutes over. Blog entries, being as short as they are, doesn't take that much of an effort.

Lately I've also started reading blogs in Norweigan. Swedish and Norweigan are quite similar, but it isn't the same and I always used to fetch a deep sigh when we were forced to read books in Norweigan at the university (which didn't happen very often I must admit but anyhow). Short blog entries in Norweigan on the other hand, doesn't scare me off and who knows, I might even end up learning some Norweigan :-)

I wrote a long comment in German on Johannes Schütz' interesting entry
Weblogs � Zeichen f�r eine neue Wissenskultur on Arbeitskreis Offene Kanäle Österreich two days ago but I never posted it.

Why?

I suddenly felt insecure to get involved in a more complicated dicussion in German, a discussion reaching above the more common and easier "I agree/disagree"-kind of comments you often leave in blogs.

I can read quite complicated texts or take part in high-level discussions in German. But I don't have enough confidence to actually say something myself. Not in German at least. As if they would shoot me if I decline an adjective wrong!

The blogosphere consists of so much interesting people and ideas, and I don't want to be locked up in Swedish (a great language btw, you should learn it! ;-)).

And discussion is more important than grammar. I shouldn't worry about der, die and das so much, so why do I?

I read Torill Mortensen's and Jill Walker's essay Blogging thoughts: personal publication as an online research tool tonight and it's brilliant! I wish I had read it two months ago when Gustav first pointed me in their direction. Why didn't they show up at BlogTalk?

Maby I should have three weblogs instead of one: a Swedish, an English and a German.

I've been thinking about it ever since I started blogging in diffrent languages but I always thought it was more convenient to keep everything in one place. Maby it isn't.

K would probably be in favor of a split.

Papa Scott from Blog Talk decided to start blogging in German! Hervorragend!