L10N = nb

I finally made up my mind, and changed my language settings in the K Desktop Environment to my native language, Norwegian Bokmål (nb), instead of British English. This completes my system localisation (L10N) and marks a personal language‐turning point for me.

I have long believed strongly that English will be the language of the web and the future. But recently, … Well, I have just had a change of heart. As I was working on a HTTP content negotiation class in the PHP programing language I spent a lot of time thinking about languages. I concluded that there really is no reason why all content should be available in English. Came to think about it, there really is no good reason why any content should be available in English!

Everyone who knows some history knows that the English language got to where it is today due to the British imperialism in the fifteenth–nineteenth century. But there is no reason why their insanity should live on. Norwegian is [two] perfectly good language[s]! Our language sounds better than English. So why is it all English? English is not even the world’s biggest language!

I see the Norwegian government investing quite a lot of money on having multilingual versions of every official web service. Usually it is the two variants of Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk) and English that is prioritised. When you think about it, that really does not make any sense in a contry with three official languages. Wait, did I say three? Hell yeah! Northern Sami is an official language as well as Norwegian Bokmål and Nynorsk). But there is no money being invested in having every official web service available in all of our own contry’s three languages. I see no reason why English is being given such a high priority in Norway.

Speaking of British imperialism… Maybe the Norwegian government rather should be spending the tax payer’s money on some Norwegian language imperialism in Scandinavia!! I am not saying we should invade Denmark or Island. But maybe be spending some money on trying to export Norwegian culture, music, art, business, and our language to our language‐wise closely related neighbouring contries. That would strengthen Norwegian over time.

Personally I have been writing a lot for the Norwegian language Wikipedia. I think that by contributing content to getting one of the world’s most powerfull websites available more Norway friendly is a good thing to do. I hope that by doing so, I will contribute to keeping the shared Norwegian knowledgebase and language alive.

I am also writing an article about HTTP content negotiation in Norwegian. I hope to get it published. (Though that is unlikely as we almost does not have any web production related magazines in Norway.)

The irony here of course being that I wrote this blog post in English…. What do you think about L10N and English as a global language for everyone? (Try to really think about it before commenting.) Keep in mind that this is all personal opinion.

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