lekker multiculti: bilingual tumblr

investigating digital communication 2023 | they / them | honorary molletje | profile art by Mu and Coco

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

an introduction

hi! my name is quinn, my pronouns are they/them, and i'm a linguistics student in my second year at university. in my easter semester this year, i took a module named 'investigating digital communication', in which my assignment was to write an essay analysing authentic data from a technology platform and discuss issues pertinent to digital communication in relation to the data.

essentially, i had to pick a topic i liked in regards to digital communication and write an essay on it using data from whichever platform (or platforms) i thought would work best.

given my usage of tumblr in my personal life, i decided to focus my investigation here, and i then narrowed that focus down further to multilingualism due to my own vested interest in that. in the end, my research question became

how is multilingualism used on the internet: an analysis of the dutch wie is de mol television show's hashtag on tumblr.

following on from our assignment, we also need to give an oral presentation on our research and findings. this could be presented in any way we liked, and given the overall relation to tumblr, i decided to create this account and post my findings on it.

note : posts are uncapitalised on purpose.

i reference a few linguists throughout this, citations are here:

Crystal, D. (2006). Language and the Internet. Cambridge University Press.

Internetworldstats.com. (2020). Top Ten Internet Languages in The World - Internet Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm [Accessed 24 Apr. 2023].

Internetworldstats.com. (2023). World Internet Users Statistics and 2023 World Population Stats. [online] Available at: https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm [Accessed 24 Apr. 2023].

Jarc, J.T. (2018). Internet Slang. In: The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet. SAGE Publications.

Lee, C. (2016). Multilingualism online. Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, Ny: Routledge.

Paolillo, J.C. (2007). How much multilingualism? Language diversity on the Internet. In: The multilingual internet: Language, culture, and communication online. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Petrosyan, A. (2023). Most used languages online by share of websites 2023 | Statista. [online] Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/262946/most-common-languages-on-the-internet/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2023].

[fencecollapsed]

100 of CJ's Faves

No particular order on these, just put 'em down as they came to me. Threw in a few favorites from this year so far at the end <3

How many have you seen?

1-10

11-20

21-30

31-40

41-50

51-60

61-70

71-80

81-90

91-100

Voting ended onApr 8, 2025

[ukulelekatie]

What is the sapir whorf hypothesis?

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the idea that language dictates thought. In the strongest sense of this hypothesis, if you don’t have the vocabulary for a concept, that concept doesn’t exist to you.

This is pretty controversial in the field of linguistics. Many agree with the concept of linguistic relativity, or the idea that language can influence the way people interact with the world. For example, different languages have different systems of words for sorting colors. In English, green and blue are considered two different colors, while several languages, like Zulu and Xhosa, don’t distinguish between the two and instead have a single word that encompasses both hues (sometimes referred to as “grue” by English-speaking linguists). On the other hand, English speakers consider dark blue and light blue to be different shades of the same color, while Mongolian has two separate words for them. Some languages, like Pirahã, only lexically distinguish between light colors and dark colors.

In other words, if you gave people from different places a bunch of paint chips and told them to sort them all by color, you might find some interesting differences in the results. But just because they’re categorized differently doesn’t mean the colors necessarily look different to different speakers. Most English speakers with normal vision can still tell the difference between light blue and dark blue even if we don’t have distinct terms for them, just like a speaker of a language without blue/green distinction can discriminate between the color of the sky and the color of grass.

The idea that language determines your thoughts (linguistic determinism) also leads down a very slippery slope, often with racist connotations. (Linguistics as a field has quite a long history of racist ideology, unfortunately.) The most famous example of this is Whorf’s conclusion that the Hopi Native Americans have no concept of time because the Hopi language does not have grammatical tense. In reality, there are other structures in this language that Hopi speakers utilize in order to just as effectively convey the past, present, and future as languages that do so with grammatical tense. On the flip side, English does not have a grammatical gender noun class system like Spanish or French does, but no one is trying to argue that English speakers don’t have a concept of gender!

My linguistics professors in undergrad really emphasized how flawed this hypothesis is, despite how convincing it can sound on the surface, and it has stuck with me and my classmates ever since. A few years ago, I was hanging out with some friends from college, and the only friend in the group who didn’t take at least one ling class mentioned something about reading “a really cool article about how language affects the way you think!” I can still hear the collective groan of everyone else in the room when he said that, followed by all of us scrambling to explain the issues and nuances of that claim 😂

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

conclusion ...

multilingualism is prevalent on the internet

english is becoming a less dominant language

multilingualism is used for a variety of reasons, such as for comedy or due to a lack of translation.

this data collection focuses on dutch posters who have likely grown up with the internet

the study of different nationalities and age groups would benefit this

the study of more platforms would also be helpful due to the general relaxation of rules on tumblr

there is also a bigger widm community on twitter, so even to continue the widm studies, it would be useful to include twitter

i leave you with a meme of the host for widm

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

alongside the borrowing of different phrases or words, sometimes multilingual speakers will partially translate things they say. this can be for a variety of reasons, such as ease or comedic value.

partial translations ...

“y'allemaal”

'allemaal' here is the dutch word for everyone, and it is being mixed here with the american english “y'all”, a condensed form of the phrase “you all”. this is mostly being used for comedic purposes, but it may also be to save time, as it is quicker to type y'allemaal than it is to type jullie allemaal, which would be the direct dutch translation.

the post, when translated, means:

y'all i have terrible news, i think my lesbian crush is soy

and the tag below means:

it's the musicals and the curls i think

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

borrowings ...

borrowings and loanwords are some of the obvious consequences to cultural exchange, and this is shown in these posts. whilst not being 'official' loanwords, there is a lack of an appropriate translation in dutch, which pushes the poster to instead using the english.

“walk of shame”

although a well known idiom in english, there is not an equivalent to this in dutch. the words of course each have their own translations, but the overall phrase is not reflected in dutch, and so it is possible that a layer of the intended meaning would have been lost had the writer simply translated it into their native tongue.

the post, when translated, means:

that little flag that’s leaving all alone saddest walk of shame

“shenanigans”

once again here, this is being used instead of the dutch as a replacement for inadequate translations. shenanigans as a word doesn't exist within the dutch language, and its usage is not a 'normal' way to do so.

the post, when translated, means:

no treasurer shenanigans??

and the tag below means:

no physical money?

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

borrowing internet references ...

in the online sphere, people often use references enough that they become embedded into a person's dialect. however, the highly specific meaning often means that these sentences do not translate well.

here, despite the extended use of english, the main focus is the first sentence. these are references that have come from the world of fiction, often in television shows. the first refers to characters that an audience collectively loves, making them a fan favourite, whilst the second refers to a journey a character may go on, along which they'll become a villain, creating their villain arc.

the post, when translated, means:

fan favourite to villain arc????? love that for her, play that money out of the pot sweety u deserve it

and the tag in dutch below means:

she better be back next week

“crystal girlie representation”

“fanfavourite to villainarc”

there are two references to internet culture here, being “emotional support” and “crystal girlie representation”. emotional support is a twist on the well-known idea of emotional support animals, but upon the internet it has become common to refer to anything as emotional support, though it is most regularly a funny animal or an abstract matter. in this case, the poster is using it to refer to a contestant and a stone she regularly had on her.

the crystal girlie representation is a reference to a trend that has become popular lately, romanticising and popularising a lifestyle in which a person admires, collects, and has a deep connection to crystals.

the post, when translated, means:

i miss kim lian and her emotional support stone

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

quantity of english ...

the quantity of differing languages used in a multilingual post is often down to personal preference, but it can also be contextual, and often depends on the length of whichever phrase an individual is using.

“gay agenda”

as seen here, the phrase “gay agenda” is the only part of this post that happens to be in english, and the rest is dutch. the word 'agenda' does exist in the dutch language, where it means 'planner', but here it is being used in a different context to that. 'gay' is also not a dutch word.

the phrase here is being used as a reference to historical persecution of lgbtq+ people, in which groups would insist there was some form of gay agenda to fearmonger. it is used now, as it is here, in a satirical manner by members of the lgbtq+ community, as an action of reclaiming it.

the sentence, when translated, reads:

this is the gay agenda they're always talking about

“what if we kissed”

this post, in comparison, uses much more english than it does dutch, and it is likely being used here for comedic affect rather than to make any serious statements. the phrase “what if we kissed” refers to a meme from pre-2016, and as the audience of the post are people who would have been using the internet for an extended period, they would understand the reference to the meme.

the sentence, when translated, reads:

what if we kissed in the maze during the analogue test and the cameras would catch our flags bumping into each other

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

ethics

the widm tag on tumblr is not private, meaning that a viewer does not need to log in to see posts. anything the users post will be visible to anyone who happens to stumble across the tag, which then gives access to their accounts.

however, in the interest of my study, participants have been anonymised out of respect for their privacy. this, in turn, means that i did not need to get permission and consent.

at the end of my data collection period, the community on tumblr was made aware of my presence, so that anyone could message me and request their data was not used, or ask simple questions.

this offer is still open now on this account. i encourage people to message me if they have questions, or if they recognise a post mentioned as theirs and would rather i delete it. that is perfectly okay.

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

the english internet ...

english represents nearly 59% of websites (petrosyan, 2023)

more than half of internet users are from asia (internetworldstats.com)

most internet users will not use english in their offline lives, despite how prevalent it is online.

lee (2016) says other languages are on the rise as the internet becomes more common and affordable across the world

however

no single method can show the wealth of language usage

internetworldstats.com (2020) states that although people are multilingual, they assign one language per person to represent the world population

paolillo (2007) proposes that areas with less linguistic diversity are more likely to gain full access to the internet, and that the internet prefers larger languages

lee (2016) suggests that languages are underrepresented on the internet due to limitations of research methodologies, such as self-reported data or the way only public web contents can be analysed

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

what is ...

netspeak

in short, netspeak is internet slang

the term was coined by david crystal (2006)

jarc (2018) defines it as a mode of communication consisting of:

shortened words

shortened phrases

neologisms

abbreviations

initialisms

paraverbal markers

paralinguistic markers

examples

note : most netspeak is in english.

lol - laugh out loud

ppl - people

k - okay

ez - easy

/j - joking (this is a tone tag)

def - definitely

ty - thank you

[linguisticsnotlinguine]

what is ...

wie is de mol?

a dutch television show

a version of the belgian reality game 'de mol'

involves ten celebrity contestants

participants travel to another country

they compete in assignments to earn money

one contestant is the mol

the mol's goal is sabotage

nobody knows who the mol is

participants complete small tests on mol's identity

they are eliminated based on who gets the most wrong

the mol is exempt from elimination