One thing I consider myself very fortunate for is having been born in the United States. I grew up speaking English right from the get go. I know all the different dialects across our country. It is very obvious when you come across some blogger who grew up with English as a second language. I feel for them.
I have come across some really outstanding blogs in my travels that were being run by someone who was trying very hard to fit into this world of English speaking people. Their graphics and their layouts can be quite impressive. I know that in some other countries the students study things like Photoshop as part of their regular curriculum. We never did that. So sometimes our graphic skills (as you can tell from my blog) just plain suck.
When you are reading their blog posts though, the words don’t flow well. You have to stop and think for a minute (at least I do) about what they really are trying to say. I think that this communication barrier ends up hindering their progress toward traffic growth. People are fickle. If you give them one reason not to come back to your blog, they won’t come back.
I guess there was not any major goal with this post other than to point out the fact that we native born English American bloggers and other Brits, Aussie’s, New Zealander’s, etc. ought to consider ourselves lucky. We have an advantage over the millions of other bloggers out there who simply don’t have those English skills.
One day soon, I think that we will wish we could speak Mandarin Chinese though. It is funny how things always come around full circle like that. As the Chinese economy grows by leaps and bounds, more of those Chinese people are going to be online. As anyone would guess, their bloggers’ audience is going to be a lot larger than ours is. Right now, the English speaking world has more wealth than the non-English speaking world. But, soon all of that is going to change.
So, if you are an Asian who is struggling to blog in English, you might want to think about what the future holds in store. There might be other opportunities popping up for you that you have not yet realized. Sometimes being the first to do something is more important than being the best.
I certainly don’t think that Darren Rowse from Problogger.net is one of the best bloggers out there. Darren happened to be early to the scene and yes he was very smart to capitalize on his opportunity. Usually the first bloggers in a certain niche will easily dominate that niche. They end up being seen as an authority figure for their niche even though they might not know as much as the next person. People assume they are the most knowledgeable because they are better well known. That is what branding is all about. (Don’t misunderstand me. I do not mean to belittle Darren. He is out of my league and he does know his stuff. I just don’t think he is the best at it or the most knowledgeable.)
If you are new to a niche that nobody is talking about, you will have less competition. That makes your chances of success even greater than they otherwise would be. Once the momentum is on your side, it should be a lot easier.
Writing about this reminds me of a book I read once called Acres of Diamonds. It is about how a man sold his property to go look for a diamond mine so he could be rich. Then, the person who bought his property soon realized that there were acres of diamonds all over this property that the other man was too blind to see. The original owner never looked for them there.
There are ways for all of us to capitalize on our surroundings. Rather than looking for greener grass elsewhere, sometimes it is better that we just stick with what we know and develop it to its fullest extent. I can’t help but think that some of these foreign bloggers could be totally ruling some decent niches in their own native tongue.
Are you overlooking your acres of diamonds?
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Hi Kathy,
Totally new to your blog but I’d like to applaud you for blogging about something that I’ve never seen anyone else blog about before. Like ever. So my opinion on this is that, yes, if you have a large English speaking demographic reading your blog your English better be pretty darn spiffy! Sometimes in college, we’ll do peer reviews and help our fellow foreign students with their papers and just getting through the essay is already a difficult task in and of itself because the grammar is horrible. However, I still would encourage foreign language speakers to practice their English because unless they try they’ll never really learn.
Thanks for the applause. I was a little hesitant to publish this one because I don’t want to alienate anyone, especially my foreign friends who visit here. I don’t want to discourage them from blogging in English. I merely wanted to point out that I understand it must be more difficult for them than it is for people like us. Plus I wanted to point out that there might be more opportunity in other languages as well that would be really easy to overlook. Someone who properly positions herself now can capitalize on a rapidly expanding internet culture in her own country.
By the way Mandy, I had to fish your comment out of the Akismet spam filter. So you had better pay them a visit and ask for reinclusion. Because you are blogging in a niche that is heavily spammed, you are going to get labeled as a spammer far more easily than other people.
If you want to know a link building method that will work wonders for your niche, shoot me an email at my contact page and ask. I will clue you in on a really effective technique that you probably don’t know about.
You are right @Kathy. I am not a native speaker then it is much harder to struggle with English native speakers in blogging niche. However, most of bloggers now are not native speakers but they know how to get attention from the community. Blogging teachs me a lot of things and help improve my English too :-)
I don’t blame you for trying. I sympathize with you because I know how hard it is to do something like this that does not come easily to you.
You are absolutely correct. My own language is less then perfect and I had quite a few comments, some just down right rude suggestions to pretty much shut up, if I can’t write without errors, including one from a published author. I guess she was in bad mood…
Either way – I replied every time: as long as my content helps people, as long as it delivers information I intended – I succeed! And not just on level of personal satisfaction but also by attracting consistent readership and earning from that blog.
–Alex
Alex,
This comment was flagged by Akismet. So, someone has flagged you as a spammer. That is something else that probably happens often to non-English speaking bloggers. I bet they get flagged as spam all the time. It is hard for someone who writes and speaks great English to tell whether someone it is a bot leaving the comment of if it is someone who just doesn’t know English well.
These are the reasons why I think that blogging in English can be a major struggle for people outside the English world.
Awww thanks so much for letting me know about the spam filter, Kathy! I really appreciate it because I had no idea.
Anyway, another thing is that there’s honesty in your blog post. I know for you it must really feel like it could be something potentially “controversial” but that’s where we can hear you voice your concerns and opinions. After all, that’s what a blog is right? Blogs have now become so commercial that I feel as if there’s nothing personal about it anymore.
I think this post will also help to encourage non-native English speakers to potentially write blogs in their native language as well which will also really help people in their country learn about the revolution of the internet like what you said above about capitalizing on the internet.
Looking forward to reading your blog more often and I’ll take you up on that offer and email you soon! :)
Any time you want advice all you have to do is ask.
Hey Kathy this is a great post, I have come across many bloggers where you can tell that English is not there native tongue and I do feel for them.
However, you mentioned things that I have never bothered to think about. Perhaps they are all sitting on acres of diamonds. While I am writing this I am thinking I better look and see if I am sitting on a stash myself.
I would also like to extend a applause as well, many would not blog on this type of topic due to mixed feelings the readers may have. Thanks for making me rethink my own blogging style.
You bet Jenny.
I hope you discover something new and highly lucrative that you have been overlooking this whole time.
Hi Kathy,
This is pretty good. You’re absolutely right about us staying in our own lane.
I was on a site today and I cannot think of the article but the graphics were just awesome so I fully understand when you say, “there are ways for all of us to capitalize on our surroundings.”
This post will be linked in my Sunday’s article — thanks for helping me to drive a point. ;-)
You’re awesome Kissie! Thank you.
Great post.Very helpful article for non-native English speakers like me.I have also seen many blogs with great design but with poor english.
I’m glad everyone agrees about this. There are so many good bloggers out there who are struggling because of this.
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Hi Kathy,
I came across your comment at Nicholas Cardot’s Site Sketch 101 and your latest post title really seduced me to come and drop by. I am from Malaysia and here blogs or website are mostly in Malay language (not the gov. sites as they support multilingual selection).
Yes, non-native speaking bloggers have to struggle more in explaining their thoughts or ideas. However, I’m looking in another angle. Although their English is not near to perfect, at least they try hard to make you understand. They can easily wrote it in their native language, but for the sake of sharing (and marketing) they try their best to write in English.
I myself face problem finding the vocabs when I had to wrote my post. My blog is fully written in English but most of my visitors are from Malaysia. My visitors, whom most are Malays try to write out their comments in English to show their supports. Although some of the words were upside down, I am proud of them. They try hard to make it and that is something worth being acknowledged.
I really like the fact that you came out with this interesting issue, Kathy.
Noor,
Like I told other people, I don’t blame you for trying. I know that in a lot of countries, the American dollar goes a long ways. What might seem like a small amount of blog income to someone living near me, might be a decent amount of money to someone elsewhere in the world.
I visited your site and left you a comment as well. I wish you great success.
You’ve thought outside the box and written on a subject you don’t see too many talking about. I admin a writing community and everyday come across those whose first language isn’t English. Sometimes the words are not in the correct order and what not. I have to get them credit for their desire to learn though. The same can be said for bloggers.
I admire them too. What they are trying to do is not easy.
Kathy, I’m friendly with many bloggers that have English as a second or even a third language. I saw a post the other day about how one of them is using After The Deadline (soon to be renamed SpellPress) to help with spelling and proper usage of English grammar. It’s a WordPress plugin and browser extension for Chrome and some others. Hey, the funny thing is there’s plenty of bloggers that can benefit from this even those of us using English as a 1st language. :)
I agree Ileane. We can all use some spit and polish. Anything that helps with spelling and grammar would be a huge benefit to foreign language bloggers.
I have also had a hard time understanding some blogs where English isn’t the native language of the author. Unfortunately, for many of them they have no choice but to write in English if they are to cover a vast majority of visitors to their blog, unless they are targeting more local visitors.
Event those that have English as a first language also have trouble with their writing on their web site/blog. I can’t count how many times such simple mistakes such as “loosing” instead of “losing” I have read online. Word such as that are learned very early on in school, so I’m not sure what happened when they grew older.
Welcome to my blog Paul.
Sometimes I feel like a hypocrit. I am guilty of many misuses of the English language. I find myself struggling with certain words and punctuation. I am forever putting commas where they don’t belong and other sins of that nature.
I think one of my most common typos is typing form when I mean from or vice versa.
Guilty as I may be, I do try to get it right.
None of us is perfect, especially when it comes to punctuation. For me, the problem is with semi-colons. I never know when to use them. I just re-read my previous comment and realized that I had a spelling mistake (Event instead of Even). No body is perfect.
Hi Kathy
What an insightful post. I always smile when Americans talk about speaking Englisl
especially when it comes to spellingdifferent words to the way the Brits spell them lol
In Australia we mostly use English as spoken in the UK although with movies(now that’s an American word for a start) we do slip in a few from across the Atlantic.
We do a lot of trade with China and definitely Mandarin is handy to have in the biz world although Aussies are notorious for only speaking our own language!
With blogging it must be difficult if it is a person’s second language cos I have to admit I do notice the way sentences are constructed, posts are written and if comments are left on my blog and the English is not very good I can suspect bots so it is a hard one isn’t it?
Patricia Perth Australia
I think of it like a person trying to build a house without a few of the essential tools. You are going to need more than just a hammer and nails. You are going to need saws to cut wood with. Those bloggers who do not speak English naturally are missing one essential tool. They still might build a nice blog, but it is going to be much harder than it otherwise would be.