Statuses in languages

[mummimamma]

Some days ago I had an idea. What if I wrote all my statuses on Facebook in one particular language for one week

Comments

[astragalizo]

My FB friends are from several countries, and unfortunately there is no common language that everyone understands (not even English), so I normally use English for most stuff, Japanese for stuff I want all my Japanese friends to read (or for my impressions about Japanese media I've just enjoyed, or stuff I don't want my mum to see, and a large part of my non-Japanese flist speaks Japanese anyway so), Polish when I talk about boring Polish politics I want everyone uninterested to ignore, and very rarely German, Chinese or French

[mummimamma]

Thank you for answering. Yeah, I think that most who writes in more than one language chose language after the intended group of recipients. Although that part about writing in Japanese so your mother wouldn't understand made me laugh.

And also I agree with the backlash of writing in a foreign (for the reader) language is lower when you have a group accustomed to being in contact with several languages.

[hnpcc]

In agreement. My current friend's status list has seven languages in five alphabets (you know what I mean!) happening, of which I can read 3. If I'm desperate to know I'll ask (usually when it's accompanied by other indications of something interesting happening!) or babelfish it, but generally speaking I skip over it. One of my friends routinely posts everything in his native language plus an English translation; other friends post in whatever langauge is easiest/most relevant to what they're updating about (Malaysian politics gets frequent updates in three languages, which cracks me up a lot, especially when the comments change languages mid-stream).

I admit if I update in something other than English I tend to get weird looks/comments and requests for translation - then again, most people know that I'm English speaking, and it doesn't happen often enough for them to be used to it. Pretty much everyone on my flist speaks/reads English so I usually update in that because it's easiest and I know everyone can skip over it quickly.

[freecloud13]

I see friends' statuses in English, Slovene, Italian, French, German, Turkish, Serbian, Russian, Romanian, Finnish, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Indonesian, Japanese... People are free to use the language they wish, really. I am trilingual, I switch between languages depending on who could be interested in what I write. For example, when I make comments about current events in Italy, and I am curious to see what my Italian friends think, I'll write in Italian. Many other friends will not understand but it wouldn't concern them anyway. Sometimes I use online translators to try understand what my friends wrote in a language I don't know.

[astragalizo]

I switch between languages depending on who could be interested in what I write

Yeah, so much this!

[mummimamma]

I am trilingual, I switch between languages depending on who could be interested in what I write.
Yeah, it seems like this is pretty common, whether conscious or not.

[pikku_gen]

"People are free to use the language they wish"

This. I see status updates in Finnish, English, Swedish, French, Japanese, something I believe is Mongolian, Dutch... can't even remember. And I only speak the first four languages. If I'm curious, I'll ask; but mostly it's just "Oh. Strange, fascinating languages I don't know! Cool. Next..." Then again my native tongue is very small, and I can't expect every one of my friends understand it.

Here in LJ I try to write at least a couple of lines in English if the entry is public or even for the larger amount of friends. I have a tag for the English language entries (or the occasional entry in any other language I feel like writing in) so they're easy to discern.

[bookwrm17]

All my Facebook friends speak English, so I tend to post mostly in that language with the occasional status update in French. Some of my friends will also occasionally post in French, Spanish, Latin, or Chinese. Recently one of my friends did a French-language immersion program, so we wrote on each other's walls exclusively in French for a month or so

[mummimamma]

Thank you for answering. Is there a lot of the "What does this mean"-comments? Because I see them very rarely myself, despite the diversity of my fb-friends.

I really just stick to languages that at least some of my friends will understand - so even if I knew, say, Swahili, I probably wouldn't post in it, because no one would be able to understand it.

Funny you should say that since I have two friends currently, and independently from each other, is learning Swahili and posting updates in the language. I do not understand a word.

[bookwrm17]

The "what does this mean?" comments I think tend to happen when people post in languages that most of their friends don't know. For example, I have Chinese friends who sometimes post in Mandarin, because they have lots of Mandarin-speaking friends as well as their English speaking ones, and the anglophones tend to ignore it, probably because they realize the comment is just meant for a different social circle and asking might seem rude. But I also have a friend who's studying Japanese, who doesn't have many Japanese-speaking friends but occasionally updates his status in Japanese just for fun. He gets asked about it, probably because his friends realize he's not trying to speak exclusively to one group of people. Same thing with my friend who posts in Latin.

[mummimamma]

Yeah, I imagine Twitter has some of the same mechanisms as Facebook, like the idea of skipping entries in unknown languages, and choosing language after target group. Although I see more bilingual updates/translations on Twitter than on Facebook, maybe because Twitter has a more open readership than Facebook.

I thought of doing the experiment cross-platform on Twitter as well as Facebook, but my readership on Twitter is more or less only Norwegians, so I wouldn't get the same feedback/discussion I hope to get.

[naobot]

In my city (Toronto), many people speak more than one language. (I think nearly half or aronud 40% of the population speaks a language other than English as their mothertongue.) The majority of my friends and peers are immigrants or children of immigrants, so it's entirely common to see Facebook statuses in Chinese or Korean. Once in a while there'll be a French status too, but usually not from native speakers.

I think Torontonians in general are very used to and even proud of our multicultural and multilingual city, so in general people are not really surprised or bothered by seeing such things in foreign languages.