Why I switched to English.

About why I decided to start writing this blog in English.*

*again. iykyk.

Nope. My previous post wasn’t just a one-off: I am making a language switch on this blog, and will be writing all my future posts in my best English. Some of you know that I actually started out like this waaaaaay back when, but since it might’ve come as a little shock to my newest readers, I thought I owed you all at least a little bit of an explanation. Here goes!

the potential.

This should make sense, right? A lot of people speak English, not a lot of people speak Dutch or Flemish. Logically, that tells us that writing in English has the potential to reach a lot more people simply because it’s more accessible. And so, if I want this little side hustle of mine to keep growing; it makes sense that I’d make the switch.

the move to Etsy.

Moving my webshop to Etsy is one of the big items on my ‘Mission 2025’ to do list. Putting everything in English on there is obvious, given the platform’s international audience, and it just wouldn’t make sense to use different languages on different platforms, because in the end you just know everything is linked, anyway. Besides, someone non-Dutch/Flemish who likes my art should be able to get to know me the same way my Dutch readers/clients can, and getting stranded on a website full of gibberish they can’t understand might scare them away, haha! In short, this means a lot more people can feel welcome on here, and I look forward to getting to know each and every one of them.

I was getting rusty.

I have always LOVED the English language. I read in it since about forever, preferred original (non-dubbed) animated films even when I was a child, had a British pen pal, am the go-to amateur tutor to a lot of friends (‘ kids), my brain is probably around 80% wired in it, and yet… I got the feeling that whenever I had to speak English, mostly when we have foreign customers in our bar, I was getting rusty. Once fluent, flowing words and sentences were fumbled, and where I used to be able to just about pass as ‘the real deal’, I sounded like, well… Like a Flemish person speaking English. That shook me to my core, haha! Needless to say, I’m quite excited about getting back to my previous level by keeping that part of my brain on its toes through this blog.

I don’t have the time to do both.

I know what you might be thinking: isn’t it easy, with today’s hyper intelligent technology, to have both a Dutch and English option on your website? I suppose it is, but a) I don’t want to work with AI, even if it COULD translate everything correctly (I don’t think it can, and bad grammar is cringe, sorry, not sorry), because of a lot of reasons. Want to know them? Ok, here I go: it’s bad for the environment (it is!), often superfluous, soulless, impersonal and it’s downright lazy. I said it. Oh, and b) I sadly do not have the time to do it myself and write every post in both languages. Ergo: the language more people can understand is the obvious winner. And, you know… All of the above.

That leaves me with only one thing to say, and that is that even though I’m making this switch, you, my sweet Dutch/Flemish readers, shouldn’t feel obliged to do the same. Please, feel free to keep commenting or messaging or whatever-ing in your own language, if you prefer it, and I will definitely answer in kind.

Lots of love & talk to you soon,