That’s the though that came into my mind, while I was thinking about some issues in german. I then asked myself why I just don’t write those thoughts down, and realized, that they were indeed “thought in German”. When I usually develop a blog entry I keep on building English sentences, I use my known English vocabulary, and the phrases that just pass into my mind, and add them to an article. If there is something I want to express, where a building block is missing – my mind will just produce a German word, for which I then can search for an adequate translation. Since I have got a very good dictionary installed, which can run in the background very well, this is just a task of a few seconds, and I can produce an English text.

Let’s make a short SWOT analyzes on me blogging in English:

Strength Non German Friends and colleagues can participate in the Blog, too. Usage of the English language will be trained	Weakness My parents and friends with weak English skills will only understand parts of the Blog. It will take longer to produce articles in English Cannot express thoughts as easily as in German
Opportunities Possibility to get a better reflection on articles Attract more readers from all over the world	Threats Produce just crappy text with a lot of errors Wordpuns or literally high sophisticated concepts cannot be expressed

Well indeed I think from time to time that it would just be easier to write down the thoughts in German, but I think this is often just a temporary feeling, since I sometimes just switch back thinking in German. This happens especially at occurrences where some German phrase or a part of a songtext hit my mind like before the memory of the song “Es gibt kein Bier auf Hawaii” (this is a German song, which is often played on Bier-festivals, like the Oktoberfest the translated text means “There is now beer on Hawaii, so we stay here”). But I think there are far more English song titles that come into my mind. So, this isn’t a qualified indicator.. I might even spontaneously recall some Spanish phrases (No! Esa oveja no es mia!). So I think every language I speak just enriches my vocabulary.
Using a Language where I’m not a native speaker might not allow me each and every possibility of self expression, but therefore it enriches the above mentioned vocabulary. I decided to use English without this thorough considerations, because I wanted to reach English speaking friends, too. But even this deeper look into it makes me feel, that it was not a bad decision. (There is only pity I feel for my parents, who are most probable not able to follow my expositions.)

This entry was posted by Jürgen Hösch on Friday, July 8. 2005 at 15:32. and is filed under Daily Life, Web-Site. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own blog.