BUT WE ALSO KNOW THAT A SIGNIFICANT PART OF TUMBLR USERS ARE NOT NATIVE SPEAKERS
Here’s the deal: my first language is Italian. I know plenty of people on this website whose first language is Italian. Nevertheless, when we’re interacting with each other on Tumblr, we speak English.
I am not objecting to this system, it’s actually good practice for some people, to be able to speak a second language extensively.
BUT I HAVE A PROPOSITION FOR YOU.
Why not have a “Speak Your Own Language Day” where all of us exclusively speak in our native language?
(No but apart from the small rebellion from the US-centric and generally Anglophone-centric environment we got here, think about trying to speak to people from other countries via excessive use of Google Translate it’ll be a blast)
Ok, since this post has finally reached 100 notes I think it’s a good time to give a date, and since no one else has advanced suggestions I’m gonna do it
I’m proposing Wednesday 7th May, so the post has a chance to do a couple more laps and more people get a chance to participate (French Friday sounded hilarious, but I don’t wanna wait until next friday and this friday seems a bit too soon).
How it’ll work:
- If you’re native language is something other than English, speak that!
- If you have multiple languages you can pick from the choice is yous friend, speak all, speak one, whatever’s best for you
- You’ll blog in your language all day: text posts, replies, tags (except triggers and organizational tags), the whole nine yards. Regardless of what language people choose to speak to you, you answer in your own.
- Midnight to midnight according to your own time zone
- English native speakers, if you wanna participate maybe you could practice a second language you’re learning
- If anyone makes fun of anyone else for their language (and I’m including English native speakers that might choose to speak a second language on the day) I’m gonna come for you (◕‿◕✿)
- The tag is gonna be #Speak Your Language Day if you wanna tag your posts with that!
It looks like this is a thing that is happening.
I don’t really have a second language to speak, but some of you might be interested. And others might be confused about a whole bunch of people suddenly going incomprehensible for the day.