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Polyglots who blog in target languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5313 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 8 15 October 2012 at 10:00pm | IP Logged |
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The Internet is full of polyglots who write blogs and sell language courses. I find that these blogs are often useful, and that they're a great source of study ideas. I'm not here to cast doubt on the abilities of these polyglots (because when has that ever accomplished anything?).
But I'm often surprised how few of these polyglots blog in their target languages. I can definitely see why they might be reluctant: - Posting regularly is pain even in your native language. - There's a difference between somebody who writes coherently and somebody who writes entertainingly and well. - Every time you make a tiny mistake, a hundred angry people will claim that you're an evil fraud. - Having a really successful blog is almost a full-time job these days, and it's not surprising that so few people want to do this in multiple languages. I know a of few exceptions, including the Antimoon site (which is written in excellent English) and several professional translators. And of course Iversen keeps his log in an impressively large number of languages. Still, I suspect that there are a few polyglot bloggers I must be overlooking here. Edited by emk on 15 October 2012 at 10:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4488 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 2 of 8 15 October 2012 at 10:54pm | IP Logged |
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I personally make a point of making all language-related articles in their respective
languages in my log (much like Iversen), but I of course do not have an experience and command of enough languages to say I am a polyglot. However (and I have written about this a few times here at HTLAL), I personally find writing the logs in my target languages to be a good thinking exercise and very helpful for figuring out conjuctions and sentence structure in your TL. Even though I don't write coherently in anything except English and Dutch (and perhaps my French is *not terribly awful*), I keep doing this, because I would rather keep to the principle that you should be immersive while studying your language. For me it is just another way to use the language. I am not learning a language without a purpose, so it makes absolute sense to have some form of output. Writing entries in my log is one way of doing that. Luca has written several articles in foreign languages I believe (or were they just interview transcripts?) Some of his "about" articles are in French, Spanish and Russian as far as I remember. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sctroyenne Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5172 days ago 739 posts - 1312 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish, Irish | Message 3 of 8 16 October 2012 at 6:00am | IP Logged |
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And another reason: you reach a much larger audience by writing in English. Which is a
shame for us native English speakers. I know sometimes I definitely waste more time reading this forum and the blogs that could be better used actually studying. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 8 16 October 2012 at 10:05am | IP Logged |
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I see my 'multiconfused' log as one of the ways I can avoid gliding into biglotism: Danish at home and English here at HTLAL (for the Anglophones that would be monoglotism). And even though it may not be many lines I write in each language, just the possibility that I might want to write in each and every language I know keeps me thinking about ways to formulate things and looking for possible subjects to write about. The five or ten lines in a certain language every fortnight are only the tip of the iceberg - the real benefit lies in the attitude in between: that languages are there to be USED!
Personally I grew tired of the multilingual fora because they often lay dormant for long periods, and then the silence is only broken by some wellmeant, but empty greeting ("Hallooo. Anybody there?"). So for me my log became the vehicle that made this forum not only a place for exchanging opinions about language learning, but also an instrument for learning and to some extent even a reason for learning certain languages. And that's why I have invested so most time and effort in it. I'm not surprised that people who only write in English how far they have come in a textbook or how many hours they have spent get tired after some time. NB: Some may believe that it isn't allowed to write in other languages here at HTLAL. But the existence of multilingual logs show that the rules are interpreted in a more relaxed way in the logs. Normally I provide summaries/translations/free adaptations in English when I write in other languages in my log, but there are others who find it irritating always to make two versions of their messages, and as far as I know the moderators have never intervened in such cases - in the logs, that is. In the rest of HTLAL apart from the multilingual subfora you must still either provide a translation or write entirely in English. And by keeping some of the log in English you also give people with other target languages a reason for coming back so personally I find that it is worth the extra effort. Edited by Iversen on 17 October 2012 at 8:23am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4609 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 5 of 8 16 October 2012 at 9:55pm | IP Logged |
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The more I think of it, I do share, I think, emk's surprise that more of the "star bloggers" out there, don't write more multilingually.
They could, for example, choose one of their languages as a featured language for a month say, and write whatever they were going to write in both English, and the featured language. This would be providing a direct service for other learner of that featured language (or perhaps for learners of English who happen to have the featured language as their native language). As well as showing everyone what they can do. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| mahasiswa Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 4213 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Malay Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Persian, Russian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hindi | Message 6 of 8 17 October 2012 at 1:13am | IP Logged |
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My favourite multilingual blog is a poetry blog run by (edited by) the Buenos Aires writer Jorge Aulicino
where there is a translation of a poem everyday from the original into Spanish, unless the original is in Spanish: http://campodemaniobras.blogspot.ca/ Edited by mahasiswa on 17 October 2012 at 1:15am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 8 17 October 2012 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
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Yeah it's about the audience I'd think... After all, any sane aspiring polyglot should learn English at least to basic fluency!
2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Torbyrne Super Polyglot Senior Member Macedonia SpeakingFluently.com Joined 5876 days ago 126 posts - 721 votes Speaks: French, English*, German, Spanish, Dutch, Macedonian, Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, Czech, Catalan, Welsh, Serbo-Croatian Studies: Sign Language, Toki Pona, Albanian, Polish, Bulgarian, TurkishA1, Esperanto, Romanian, Danish, Mandarin, Icelandic, Modern Hebrew, Greek, Latvian, Estonian | Message 8 of 8 18 October 2012 at 7:16pm | IP Logged |
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It's hard to find time to write in English, so writing in more languages, many of which my followers don't know
seems to be a shame. I tried in my posts to encourage others (native English speakers being the largest percentage of my audience) to learn languages. That goal is best achieved through English, I feel. That said, I do see great value in writing and I have to do it regularly in Turkish now in preparation for my B1 exam next month. I also write a lot lately in my very basic Chinese...Confucius would turn in his grave! ;p 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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