Where are the Welsh blogs?
I have just caught up with the reports of ‘Hacio’r Iaith’, on Carl Morris’s blog. This was a free, open meeting which took place physically in Aberystwyth on January 30th , with lots of associated backchannel activity on Twiter, Youtube, and elsewhere. Carl’s account makes fascinating reading, and points the way to interesting and potentially very important developments. As he says, for some parts of this you needed to be there, but other aspects start to make sense to me, simply from following the backchannels. Is reporting of events getting to the point now where the overall experience approaches the richness and quality of the ‘live’ event? (A question for another occasion, I feel).
So what is Hacio’r Iaith about? At the heart of this, in my view, is an understanding that technology and language are interdependent. This is perhaps obvious, but once you try to unravel this, a startling complexity emerges. Technology can introduce pressure leading to a reduced linguistic diversity, but as the ‘read-write web’ starts to predominate, can we expect linguistic diversity to flourish?
This reminded me of a discussion which took place some time ago on the datblogu page about the relatively low number of Welsh language blogs out there. A number of possible explanations emerged. Perhaps some bloggers are simply trying to reach the widest audience? Alternatively, as Carl suggests, people may choose to use the ‘English part of their brain’ with a specific technology (he refers to Twitter here). Either way, many first-language Welsh speakers choose to blog in the English language. However, this could be about to change given the vigorous activity which is becoming evident e.g. with the support of ‘Hacio’r Iaith and Metastwnsh. I also wonder whether the huge progress made by Google Translate will encourage writers to adopt Welsh as their preferred medium, given that they can be reasonably confident of being understood by non-Welsh speakers.
Meanwhile, the new technologies (especially those which come under the broad heading of Web 2.0) provide massive opportunities for Welsh learners to exercise their skills. I, for one, will be taking a look at ‘Say Something in Welsh’. Tweets and blogs are also a great way for learners to practise reading and writing skills with relatively small chunks of text.
When I mentioned the Welsh language blog scene on Twitter yesterday morning, there was an immediate response from a number of people. I am looking forward to seeing much more Welsh language blogging, and soon.
February 25th, 2010 at 3:27 am
In my opinion, neither is enough. We need:
1. more useful technology meet-ups in Wales (any language), with more specialisation
2. and we need them better reported
The offline nature of Hacio’r Iaith (or any BarCamp) is important because it’s the attendees who generate the agenda. It’s a one-off collection of people, all of whom influence the outcome of the event. Plus they meet each other, some for the first time, which is really important.
I think it’s up to Welsh language users to generate the kind of blogosphere they want – something that serves us and reflects our emphases. It might look different to any other language’s blogosphere.
If anything resembling a scene is observed, it’s not big enough yet. A language can be used to talk about anything under the sun. So assuming what we have now could be described as a scene, then we should plan for its glorious fragmentation.
Welsh language bloggers are defined as much by their subject matter as their choice of language. I think the outbound links from a blog written in Welsh are a measure of this, e.g. Metastwnsh is a technology blog which probably links to more webpages in English (about technology) than webpages written in Welsh. It could just as easily be said to be part of the worldwide technology scene, if any at all.
It’s pretty easy to crawl the outbound links of any Welsh language blog, it might make a nice study.
I think diversity is good for the open web as a whole and that includes linguistic diversity. The main threat to this at the moment is Facebook, which has a lot of closed content (status updates, photos and so on) and lacks permalinks to that content. Some of this stuff would be better on open blogs. These are probably problems for any language, but I suspect minority languages feel them more acutely.
Incidentally unlike Facebook there are fewer privacy problems with open blogs – everything is open which is very easy to understand.
Diolch am sôn am Hacio’r Iaith. Wrth gwrs, os ti eisiau blogio yn Gymraeg dylet ti ddechrau!
February 25th, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Diolch yn fawr iawn, Carl
Your comments are much appreciated. I am heartened by the notion that openness on the web and linguistic diversity may go hand-in-hand. This has got to be good for both first-language Welsh speakers and those (like myself) who are still learnng.
February 26th, 2010 at 2:21 am
Paul, dylen ni dylunio platfformau am bobol dwyieithog/amlieithog. Dw i ddim yn sôn am rhyngwyneb yn unig. Dyn ni’n byw gyda dwy iaith neu mwy a dw i ddim yn fodlon gyda unrhyw gwasanaeth cyfryngau cymdeithasol.
Er enghraifft does dim ffordd i cael metadata am iaith cofnod. Dw i eisiau dewis fy ieithoedd a dw i’n disgwyl fy ffrindiau i dewis/osgoi ieithoedd gwahanol hefyd. Mae’n bosib gwneud pethau fel hyn gyda algorithmau ddatrys iaith (fel chwilio ar Google). Ond dydy platfformau cymdeithasol ddim yn defnyddio nhw.