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Discussion on: Should I Write Articles in English or in My Native Language?

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard • Edited

Should I Write Articles in English or in My Native Language?

That's a great question I have been struggling myself with.
My take today would be

Writing in english is much better than not writing.
Writing in portuguese is much better than not writing.
So...

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But writing is hard.
Therefore what you might want to do, at any point of time, is to use the language you feel most like writing in.

For example I have written mostly in English for years, but this year I've written mostly in French. Because I felt like it.

The one thing I wouldn't do is to write in portuguese in dev.to and expect lots of readers to come at you. You are likely to be deceived by the lack of readers and that would have nothing to do with the quality of your writing.

English is not the language of the internet, there are more chinese speakers than english speakers. In general the internet is very much polyglot. But there are lots of micro-climates. DEV.to itself is mostly english speaking. And that's fine, you just need to take that into account.

What you can do instead for writing in portuguese is to have a blog+newsletter. Write just for you and don't worry so much about sharing it. Forget the likes, the tweets and other vanity metrics.

Writing itself is its own reward.

That's what I do in french on Substack.
👉🏻 substack.jmfayard.dev

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victorbueno profile image
Victor Bueno

Great comment, Jean-Michel!
Everything that you said makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for sharing!

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Sven Hintz • Edited

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard

Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.