Via TechCrunch comes the news that social networking site MySpace is to be launched in non-English formats, notably in French, German, Chinese and India-based languages. The article points out that the Korean blogosphere, greatly underestimated by Technorati, along with the burgeoning Italian and Japanese blogging communities are likely to be next.
While I'm not proposing that we should use random personal sites for foreign language instruction or international links in class, there is a near certainty that more links will be made between young English native speakers and their counterparts in foreign climes. I've seen connections between Scots and French teenagers being made this way through the English-language skin of Bebo, but with 75,000,000 users and 30 billion pages views a month there is more inevitability that more international links will be made with the MySpacers.
I just wonder, though: will the social spaces remain in their native tongues or will be see a progression to the use of English to communicate across borders? I'm quite excited whatever the response, since this is really the first time that we will be able to observe teenagers from different countries and languages communicating with each other in a non-school environment en masse. It's just so Attenborough!
With what I have been hearing about (South) Korea of late, I would be surprised if their blogcount wasn't being underestimated! While India and China appear to be making every effort to be taken more seriously by the world at large, Korea just seems to be getting on with business as usual... and making huge strides forward in the process.
I posted on this a while ago, and received some interesting feedback:
http://karynromeis.blogspot.com/2006/05/is-korea-leading-way.html
Posted by: karyn_romeis | June 21, 2006 at 09:34 AM