Is language a barrier in steemit community?
I was busy writing a travel log the other day and just on my hourly steemit visit, I came across 
read it here: read it here.
https://steemit.com/sport/@thecryptofiend/the-sporting-taboo-is-using-performance-enhancing-drugs-really-cheating
Now, the blog was quite interesting and thought provoking and that really set my grey cells ticking. I started commenting and we both had some thoughts exchanged on the subject. you can read my comments in the above blog.
To start with my blog here, I quote a small section from @Cryptofiend’s blog.
Most athletic and sporting organisations put forth the view that
keeping PED out of sports helps to maintain a level playing field. "It
makes things fair because nobody has an unfair advantage."The "level playing field" idea is a myth.
I would like to assert that this is complete nonsense.
There is no level playing field, because a level playing field assumes that everyone starts off at the same baseline level of ability and chances. There are multiple factors that create differences between people
Later on sometine soon, I came across another blog by 
I quote from his blog:
According to the United Nation-2016, 72.3% of all Zimbabweans were considered poor, whilst 62.6% of the households in Zimbabwe are deemed poor. Poverty is more prevalent in rural areas compared to urban areas with about 76% of the rural households considered poor compared to 38.2% of urban households.
From what I see from the Steemit stories till now, most of the
Steemians are Western people. Off course it's nice to receive a couple of hundreds bucks for a post, but imagine what it means for people that have a monthly salary of 50$ or even less. We are sitting on something than can change the lives of a lot of people.Zimbabwean community have showed great interest in Steemit because there is a lot of untapped raw talent.There are many talented writers,singers ,poets , actors who lake exposure ,and will use this platform to showcase their talents
Please read
https://steemit.com/steemit/@tinashe/steemit-future-in-africa-zimbabwe-going-viral
After reading these 2 blogs, I could not continue writing with my next travel blog any more.
I saw language appeared to be a great unequalizer in the steemit community and felt deeply obliged and compelled to address an apparent disparity that I saw in the steemit platform.
Steemit blogging is all about engagement by the author with his/her readers, the intensity of which leads subsequently to the upvotes and payouts.
Let’s for a moment think.... Can a Zimbabwean blogger engage his readers with the same intensity as an European or American blogger in steemit? Of course there are exceptions and there could be a few awesome zimbabwean bloggers around.. But here I am speaking about the general or the average zimbabwean.
Let’s check it out. In Zimbabwe, only 2% consider English as a native language while the rest of the population speak Shona (76%) and Ndebele(18%) where as in Europe, about 51% have sufficient skills in English to have a conversation and in America it is 80%
( source Wikipedia/ internet)
Next the Europeans and North Americans are generally well travelled, have better access to education, resulting in perhaps, better articulation and presentation. Grammatically their language also score very high compared to an asian or an African native.
Further United states and Europe are in the forefront of technology, science and it decades before some of these technology reach the third world countries. For example.
(Old hand water pump (c. 1924) at the Colored School in Alapaha, Georgia, US; typical of the period and the area)
(Image source: Internet...Image for representation only)
(present day India or Africa where handpump is used)
(Image source: Internet...Image for representation only)
and that is a full 93 years later, India still uses the hand pump while it's almost in museum in developed countries.
The reason of all my above preamble is to put forth my thoughts across: Do the Europeans and Americans when it comes to blogging in their native language? could that mean a disparity at the very core of writing in steemit community ?
Are the zimabweians at a disadvantage here?.
there is a lot of untapped raw talent.There are many talented
writers,singers ,poets , actors who lack exposure
These gentlemen from Zimbabwe are quite talented and can articulate very well in their native language and put forth their views, thoughts in very powerful manner in say Shona or Ndebele, but when it comes to penning down the same views in an alien language like English with which they are not fluent nor comfortable,
This could mean that their blogs could get diluted and the engagement with the reader could be lost, simply meaning the reader may not return to the bloggers page again.
And eventually the blogger’s posts gets sidelined or lost in the big blog-world of steemit where every other minute a blog is getting posted .
If this happens again and again, many talented Zimbabweans will gradually get frustrated, slowly slip into oblivion and eventually fade out of the platform.
On the other side, the blogger, say an European or American, who is comfortable with English being his native language, who can articulate well and lay out a beautifully structured blog as it is inherently quite natural and normal for him.. He obviously will be able to hold his readers attention better and longer. And that could make all the difference who gets paid and who does not get paid.
And there are only a finite no of steem generated every 24 hours.
In my short duration on steemit, I have seen some blogs where language was the sole and the major reason for setback and they were non starters with not even a dollar to show, even when the subject showed immense potential in the first place.
I have also seen some blogs which were articulated extremely well, the language flowed smoothly, but the content was just appeared to me as ordinary (I could be wrong here) but it paid out better.
Even for a moment if we believe that the blogger with poor language skills has good content and follow him, eventually will get put off with the same after a while and stop following him.
I am not saying it happened, but just a possibility that sprung in my mind.
With hundreds of blogs being posted every hour, each blog’s window span of getting attention is a very small duration and it is imperative that the author gets the attention of potential reader to his blog and a good language is one of the major factor ( apart from content itself) to keep him glued to the page, once he arrives there.
Of course curators are putting full time efforts to give visibility to such blogs but it appears the blog counts are increasing much more than curators could perhaps manage. This is again just an assumption on my part as since last month thousands of new steemians have come on board and curators have that much more work to do.
Here I attempt to find some way out to make it an even playing field for the disadvantaged zimbabweans.
Now if you are in a difficult situation with language as mentoned above, you can attempt any of the following:
- If English is not your native language or if you are at a disadvantage due to the language, please use the help of a friend who is good in English and you have him narrate the story for you. You give him the right feel and words and let him put it in English.
- If you are slightly better, always get a proof reading done by someone who is proficient in English. This will weed out grammatical mistakes and makes the blog reader friendly. Your engagement starts getting better
- Get hold of a dictionary, better use a thesaurus. Thesaurus gives you the synonyms that is multiple words with same meaning. Choose the best word for your sentence the one that closely relates to what you want to express. Do not use the wrong word, the meaning of the expression could change and that is not good
- Read English newspapers, magazines, novels anything that you can lay your hands on.. Read more, practise more . spend 2 hours at least a day on polishing your English. That could come real handy as you progress to become a good & matured blogger in future.
- Attend English classes, learn the grammar, start speaking in language more often. Start speaking deliberately and ask to be corrected whenever you commit any error while speaking. Polish your English.
- If you are still feeling uncomfortable. Use more photos. A photo is worth a thousand words. Interject short sentences between the photos and build your story. Let the photo narrate your stories.
- Make a video and let your friend speak in the background. He should be agood in English. It is your content and your blog. But the presenter need not be you. You can give credit to oyr friend for the same in the end
- Start your own language group. There are Chinese, Korean, Japanese groups already here . Start your own language group if your language community has a large count here, while at the same time continue learning and improving your English . When u get the hang of the platform you are ready with your English
- The idea is to connect, engage and get your blog across to your readers in best possible manner.
The above story could be related to any Indian, Asian African or any third world or developing country native where english is not a native language . I just happened to choose Zimbabwe since I happen to come across
This blog has another take away, a very interesting one if I could say. I shall blog on that aspect very soon. So please keep a tab on my next post.
Disclaimer: All the graphic contents sourced from internet.