I love participating in the topics suggested by the IndieWeb Carnival for my blog, and October's theme, hosted by Riccardo, is particularly dear to me. It's about "multilingualism in a global Web," and as a native Italian speaker, I find myself in this situation daily since the last nine months.

Riccardo is Italian, just like me, and while reading the introduction to the topic, I couldn't help but smile:

I invite you to write about your experience with foreign/artificial languages; about the role of multilingualism in a predominantly English-speaking Web; about how your daily life is affected by multiple languages; and anything you come up with that can be interesting in this discussion.

It's not just a predominantly English-speaking Web, but it's a predominantly English-speaking World too! I often find myself having conversations with colleagues and acquaintances since we moved to the United States, and only a few are aware of the privilege of being born and raised without needing to worry too much about learning another language. Because everyone outside of English-speaking countries studies English as an additional language to their native one.

While those fortunate enough to be born in the United States, Australia, the U.K., etc., don't have to exert much effort when traveling abroad. It's others who have to adapt. My wife and I often think about what it must be like to live in a world where everyone speaks your language, and wherever you go, you know there's a way to communicate.

The convention has therefore wanted that this unwritten rule, but accepted by everyone, was from the beginning of the Internet, shared, making English in fact the most popular language and the only one capable of letting you cross your national borders.

In my own small way, it took me a while to make the leap. I only started writing in English a few weeks ago, mainly to interact with other bloggers. But thinking about it, also because the English language has now become the main one through which I express myself most of the time offline.

Online, apart from this blog, I've been used to speaking in English since the early 2000s. Since I started interacting with people from all over the world through a headset and a microphone on Xbox Live using a video gaming console.

In written form, however, I had to wait for the advent of social media and especially when I began working at Microsoft in 2006. From that moment on, there hasn't been a day where I haven't written at least one sentence in English.

What about you? What’s your experience?