The right language is key to reach the most number of persons.
As you have seen I choose to write this blog in English language. This decision to make was not explicitly easy for me. Not because of having any preference in writing, I think by now English is even easier to me.
But mostly because of being sure how to engage best with the majority of my target peer group.
As explained in the intro in the „home-area“ and as well as in the „about-me-part“ one of the driving ideas behind this blog is to allow my students and anyone interested to have a place where to read and re-read the material I teach.
In theory the chance of this blog to be written in German was quite high. Most of my classes are in German language and most of my material as well. And even more important, most of my audiences are native German speakers, same as I am. So writing in German should have been a pretty straight forward decision, shouldn’t it?
Well, no. I saw two reasons for not going German:
- I said most of my classes are in German. But not all. I give classes to internationals from all over the world. These are young talented individuals who don’t know a word of German when they start their semester abroad and honestly, they don’t really know any German when they leave after 6 months are a year. German is really a nasty badass language to learn in my opinion 🙂
On top and especially beyond the world of the university, in my business and private live, I know many many people who don’t speak a word of German too. No idea if any of these persons will ever read these lines here, but if so, German wouldn’t work very well. - English is a much better medium to travel. What I mean by this, is that German is just limited. Comparing the number of German speaking people in the world ~100 Mn people (German language, Wikipedia) with the distribution of the English language ~2.0 Bn people worldwide (English language, Wikipedia) it is obvious why English has way more potential. Chinese would have been an option considering these statistical arguments but that’s something I fall short on, at least so far 🙂
So in a nutshell, by writing in English I can reach way more people. And of course I would love my readers to share whatever they like with people I don’t even know. Spreading the word is easier when the word is widely understood.
So I invite you to read and enjoy this post in my best possible English language.
