Bilingual bloggers ✨
Heey there !
It’s been a while since i’ve wrote a conversation post – and so I wanted us to talk about bilingual/multilingual bloggers ! 😉 I know I must not be the only one in here, heheh
If you’re new here, or haven’t had the chance to read my about page or my other social medias; you probably wouldn’t notice that I am a bilingual blogger myself. In fact, my english has been thaught at school since 3rd grade, up until i’ve finished college in 2014. Now you might ask yourself: “well what language does she speaks ??” – let me answer this, I’m a french speaking Canadian 🙂 (yes, we exist – and hors quebec !)
Outside of my internet life, I speak 95% of it in french – at home, with my dogs .. you get the drill. remaining 5% is at work, mainly, and when I go out and the people working there speaks english to me.
Now, what’s the benefit of it ?
+ Something great about us being able to speak more than one language, in this book community, is more books for us !!! Okay, granted i’m only now trying to read in english; but it does works so much better when you pick the book yourself and not because a class at school told you to, you know ?
+ Since we can communicate in more than one language, we can freely write our post in both if we want to ! And thus attracting different kind of readers to us.
In fact, my review I have in my draft right now has french AND the english translation of what I said – as I got the book through NetGalley france, but it had been previously released in english in 2016; so really, both communities can look at my review !
+ Talking of books, if there’s salons or activities around books happening in either of your languages around you, you can totally attend !
+ You might show people different things on your blog that they never even heard about ! As you discovered them through your nationnality or main language.
But now the “not so great” points ..
— We may get “brain bubbles” .. in either of our languages, and just completely have a blank into how words we shall use to say whatever we want to say xD some times we will have the word in language 1, but not in the language we actually need it. So we might use synonyms which turn our sentence wierder than expected …
One day at work I called my boss, and naturally asked “am I interrupting something ?” instead of “Am I bothering you?”😱 yeah. i’ll remember than one after how awful it sounded, for sure xD
— This one might be more applicable to us bloggers, grammar/ syntaxe/ orthograph errors .. bear with us, okay ? We learned this … 😅 and specially if it’s our second language, it might be harder. In my case, I somehow always write “mens/womens” even if I KNOW they don’t need one « s » to them .. my french brain just thinks it looks better that way.
Also, we might not understand what a word means and might need you to explain, which totally happened to me, as we just never crossed path with that particular word yet !
— We all have english in common here, but it might be harder to get someone who have the same first language as you ..
Let’s chat ! ;
~ Do you speak multiple languages ? what are they ? what’s your first language ?
~ If you don’t, what language would you like to communicate with?
~ yay or nay to multilingual posts ?
~ Other advantage & disadventages I forgot ?
hahaha I can relate to the “brain bubbles”. There are times that I can express myself clearer (especially jokes I want to insert in a review) with my native tongue and when I try to say it in English the whole meaning changes as well.
I just rambled. Anyway, my first language is Filipino/Tagalog and English is my second one. I’ve always wanted to try and review a book in Tagalog.
yep.. xD you try to translate your saying directly in english but eeermh.. apparently it doesn’t work that way ..
I’m trying one in both of mine.. but honestly it just looks kinda wierd as I don’t speak as I wrote it ;-; just because I speak in a mix of the two language together .. and eeerhm i dont think other french people would “get it” and understand it if they’re not from my region xD
Bonjour ma belle 🙂
I was very curious about this blog post because yes I’m bilingual too. My native language is Dutch. I speak French and English too but don’t even use English outside reading and blogging. I like the thought of bilingual posts.. I know another blog that does Swedish/English posts!
oh wow !
yeah, i’ve known of one doing it in both aswell but don’t read it myself .. and forgot who it was xD only issue here is without practice, it just feels out to get my general french out – as if I did write like I speak it, people who ain’t in my south new-brunswick area wouldn’t understand ..
bookaholicswede.blogspot.se is the blogger I was talking about. Ha and at least I don’t have to hear it.. I never understand Céline Dion when she talks. French in Canada sounds so different from French in France and Belgium!
and she’s not even have the same speak as me !! hahaha
My first language is Urdu…Sometimes it happens both in speaking/writing I got blank and completely forget everything about English 😂… Brain bubbles sound cute term 😄
haha thank you 😘 that’s one of the times where I just stare in the distance like “eeeeerh …. what’s that thing again …” mom looks at me like you okay ? im like yeeeah .. im just .. stuck on a word .. she goes oh. what is it, maybe I can help ? (mostly she cannot.. but bonus point for trying 😂)
It hurts when you want to share a joke and in your mind it is hillarious but translation destroyed it and you are like believe me it was good 😁
yeps.. or you try to communicate and they just.. dont understand you .. 😪
Woah okay, just for information – you might wanna check the website attached on your account .. I got something totally NOT that o.o found the proper one via google.
My first language is Norwegian, and I am also fluent in English and in French. I have a quite good knowledge of Spanish as well, even if it is a bit rusty 🙂
I read mostly in English, and blog only in English. I prefer to read books in the original language if the author is Scandinavian / Anglophone / French-speaking, though. But I still read mostly in English.
It’s hard sometimes to find the right word – and if I know what I want to say, but can’t find the right work – the weird thing is, I can’t find that specific word in any of the other languages I speak either. It’s so very frustrating.
Great post, Kristina! <3
Oh my god 😂😂 thats a problem .. so many languages, congrats !
Idk how I wanna proceed with that yet.. I sure wanna keep reading french, however might prefer some translation (like Ruth Ware’s) I guess it depend on my mood and/or if it will get translated ..
I’m only posting / writing in English nowadays. I feel like my skill level in my native language deteriorated during the past few years. I very rarely use it (because i don’t really have many people around me who would understand), and do all my reading in English as well. I mean, it’s still fine, and i can switch, but i feel slow sometimes 😀 In writing it’s better than when i need to actually speak.
Multi lingo posts are cool! I mean, you are connecting to more people that way i think 🙂
Yeah.. that’s what happens when you don’t use it. I had a class of spanish and eh .. I remember only a very few words 🙈
Yes! ☺️
Interesting discussion post. I only speak English sadly. It would be great to be multi lingual for many reasons along with reading and blogging. I think I get brain bubbles too, despite only speaking English.
Amanda.
Thank you !
haha yeah .. probably we all do that 😂 Do you have a language (or more) in particular you’d like to learn ?
I only speak English but I follow quite a few bilingual bloggers and sometimes there’s a blip (brain bubble :-)) in translation on both sides but I still love that we have all found a way to connect and share.
Karen @ For What It’s Worth
Yes, very true ! Amazing that even with a little difficulties, we get to understand both parties anyway!
You could say I’m also billingual cause my boyfriend is British, and everyone else, me included, is Lithuanian 😀 so I speak two different languages on a daily basis. I can speak more languages, but I only use these two regularly. I think it’s good for us to speak multiple, though – it’s good for your brain 🙂
yep ! keeping this brain working .. 💪
Reletable 😉 I speak Italian (duh XD), English, French and Spanish. But I’m better at English. Sometimes I think in English and tends to speak in that language because is a much faster one, while I find Italian being heavy. Really heavy. The point is that sometimes I have problems to pass from English to my mother language because Italian usually need more sentence or words to explain something that in English is expressed in one word meaning. Or the fact that I’m so stuck inside English that I don’t manage to pass to Italian.
aaah yeh, I see .. french also use more words than english would. Didn’t knew you spoke french aswell, neat !
That’s a great post Kristina! And I can totally relate to it. Though I only blog in English, my first language is Hindi (main Indian language). I too sometimes have grammar issues. I know there are multiple things in my posts that could be corrected, but I think I try to do my best 🙂
But yeah, we should remember we are trying to deliver all of it what we can 🙂 And you are doing amazing!
indeed ! both of us are quite good at what we do, even with the flaws !
Haha that’s a better way to think 😀
I speak English, Spanish, Italian, Sicilian, and conversational Russian. I would love to become more proficient in Russian. I can read and write very well, and I understand most of what I hear, but I have a long way to go in terms of developing spoken proficiency.
I think multilingual blogging is a great way to reach a wider audience, but I haven’t tried it yet. I would have to do multilingual posts strategically. Posting in Spanish might be lucrative as it would attract a targeted audience of English language learners, but posting in Sicilian (although it would be fun!) would probably only help me gain followers who are interested in polishing their Sicilian language skills, which is not the main focus of my blog.
Oh wow so many languages, thats impressive !
Yes I totally agree, I ended up not posting that review of mine that was in both of my language (which I only thought about it after I deleted it ..) I would need to try it out, but id put both in the same post, however im not too sure how I would separate them out..
If you’re reviewing a French book, I would assume that a French-speaking audience would be the most likely to appreciate your review. If you’re reviewing an English book and you do the review in French, your readers might not speak English so they might not be interested in reading the book. When a book is published in both languages… might as well post the review in both languages and link to each version of the book. 🙂
yes that’s true .. but how many french will stumble of my blog ? i’m not sure .. as if I do it in english and some of my viewers are learning french, they might wanna pick it up..
Nicely composed! Check out my new article on Bilinguals 🌸
https://unpluggedcreations.com/bilingual-blog-unplugged-creations/