# Do you speak other languages, but surf only in English?


I have always been very interested in languages, and I am lucky enough
to be able to [speak a
few](http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/07/19/celebrating-first-book-read-in-a-foreign-language/).
My mother tongue is Norwegian, but I also speak for example Italian,
Spanish, Esperanto, Chinese and Indonesian. And English of course.

What language to use on the web is a tricky question. And some might
consider me a bit of a hypocrite. I feel very strongly about linguistic
diversity, and am all about encouraging Chinese, Hindi speakers and
Norwegians to blog in their own languages, to create more web content in
the languages less represented on the web. At the same time, I obviously
understand the desire to reach out and be read by people all over the
world. Personally, almost all my web activity is in English. I blog in
English (I have had two different blogs in Chinese, but gave up when the
only comment I ever got was “oh, so cute, your Chinese is really good”,
and never about what I was writing about). I mostly edit English
Wikipedia (although I have made contributions to the Norwegian,
Indonesian and Chinese). I also do most of my reading in English
(although I read some Norwegian dailies and blogs, and some Chinese).
When I google for something, I always google in English - unless there
is strong reason to expect there to more material in another language.

[![(C) Gaetan Lee, licensed under CC
BY](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/106/298178764_37eac24f66.jpg?v=0 "Magnetic letters")](http://flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee/298178764/)

This is why a recent post on [My learning
journey](http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/09/a-pleasant-surprise/#comment-10101),
talking about how she had dived into the German webosphere, and found
many interesting sites, resonated with me. I should probably spend more
time surfing around in different linguistic blogospheres, but I feel I
am already spending too much time on the net… One neat tool I came up
with to encourage myself to be more linguistically diverse, is connected
to Wikipedia. I usually look up a topic on English Wikipedia, because it
usually has the longer, more complete articles - however I would be
completely capable to check out the article in other languages. This
tool automatically redirects you to the longest Wikipedia page on a
given topic, given a range of languages that you speak.

Here is an example of usage:
[http://reganmian.net/bigger/en/no,da,sv,de,it/Democracy](../../bigger/en/no,da,sv,de,it/Democracy)
This url says: I speak Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, German and Italian -
give me the longest article you have on what in English is called
Democracy. (This might seem very inconvenient, but if you save it as a
keyword in Firefox, like
http://reganmian.net/bigger/en/no,da,sv,de,it/%s, you can later type
something like “bigger Frankenstein”, and it automatically redirects
you.

One thing I would love to find though, are good websites in these
languages where people “sum up” significant developments and trends in
the national blogosphere for me. Often what I find, is people summing up
the debates on Slashdot or Digg for the national audience - which is the
last thing I want.

*By the way, I am currently looking for examples of international
students or faculty being encouraged to conducted research/publish in
their home languages - any sources would be very welcome.*

Stian\
 *Thanks to [Gaetan Lee](http://flickr.com/photos/gaetanlee/298178764/)
@ flickr for the image, licensed under CC BY*