Why Do I Blog in English?

Why Do I Blog in English?

I’ve mentioned in my very first blog post that I’m from Germany (at least I hope I did). I live in Germany, my mother tongue is German, I mostly think in German, and talk to other people in German. But why do I blog in English?

I think my English is pretty good for a foreigner. I started learning English in 5th grade, I was a good student, and soon I started reading English book that I had previously read in German. After my third year of learning English, I bought the last Harry Potter the day it came out – without having read the German translation. I almost understood everything.

I’m not trying to brag here, it’s just that from that point on the number of German books I read decreased, and I started reading more and more books in English.

Nowadays about 10% of the books that I read is in German.

Why should I read a (often horrible) translation when I can read the original words that the author has written? Why should I pay double for a German kindle ebook (yes, often they’re really that expensive)?

I figured that because I almost only read English books it would make sense for me to blog in English as well. In A Song of Ice and Fire (for fans of the TV show: Game of Thrones) they changed the names of some characters and places (e.g. Jon Snow à Jon Schnee (literal translation), or King’s Landing à Königsmund (literally: king’s mouth (which is so awkward)) . (You can tell I'm a little obsessed with brackets).

If I find a German book that I would really like to review… I don’t know what I’m going to do then. It will depend on who reads my blog (if anyone ever does haha).

There’s another simple reason why I blog in English: I want to improve my writing. Understanding English and speaking English in every day life is different from writing long texts. I’m not in high school anymore where I had to write lots of essays in English class all the time, and now I just don’t want to forget how to do it.

So just keep this in mind: My English is not perfect. But I’m not going to say “Sorry for my English” underneath every post I write, like many other foreigners (especially Germans, and I don’t know why this is) do. I don’t feel sorry for it. To be honest, I’m kind of proud of it, and very glad I’m doing this.

The next step for me would be posting videos on Youtube (which I think is so cool! And I like how the people who do it call themselves “booktubers”). But right now I don’t really have the guts to put myself on Youtube. Speaking English.  :) One step at a time!