Corporate Blogging is a wide known aspect of sharing your company’s thoughts to the public audience. Last evening I strumbled upon an announcement of the french company Social Media Group. The company publishes several blogs including their newest additions in German: „Der Auto Blog“ and „Der Vintage Blog„. The use of the masculine article „der“ in relation to the word „Blog“ causes a minor uproar in the germanspeaking Blogosphere, as most people consider the „Blog“ as a word with a neutrum gender. To accomplish this, the article „das“ would be aligned to the word. The discussion on the correct use of „Blog“ continues here and on Loïc Le Meur. My contributions to the discussion were so far these statements mainly in response to Christophe:

Just a smaller note on the naming. Actually, the correct form of naming a blog with an article is „Das Blog“ (neutrum) and not „Der Blog“ (maskulinum). Sadly, the authors of the mentioned blogs made this mistake… :( In any case, keep in mind that „Blog“ is based on „Weblog“. Let’s focus on the word itself. As we all know, it’s German word „Weblog“ is based on „das Web“ and „das Log“ („das Logbuch“) — if you simplify the language to the roots. Nevertheless, the diary is „das Tagebuch“, and if you consider these words web, log and its combined meaning of an online diary as basic principle for creating the predestined articles in masculine, feminine or neutrum cases, you are already limited to the neutrum gender. The word „Blog“ in german is an anglicism, which is a transition from an originally english word into german language. Anglicisms are one-to-one identical transitions and translations of a word into german. To recall this – „Service-Provider“, „Recycling“, „Talk“, „Team“, „Party“ are some more common anglicisms in the german language. You would never dare to write i.e. „Riesaickling“ instead of „Recycling“, „Tiem“ instead of „Team“, or „Paartie“ instead of „Party“. If this would be the case, you had to reform „Blog“ into „Block“ (which is already the word for „block“) or „Blogg“ (which is no anglicism anymore). The word „blowg“ makes no sense to me due to the anglicism of „Blog“ – and it rather reminds me of the voice-sounds created by sheep. If ever, a „blohg“ to stress a longer o-sound is acceptable – but its no anglicism anymore. The „unbestimmter Article“ (ein, eine, ein) of the word Blog is hinting at it’s neutrum gender.

I believe it is most vital for companies to carefully inspect and evaluate „foreign countries“ and specialize in the development of their region, language, culture and society before stepping into their domain of heritage. Perhaps I am able to contribute some more useful input for Blogspirit, too. Let’s see what I can make out of it.

Tags: Anglicism, Blog, Etymology, Weblog

This is an absolutely humorous video of The Daily Show on Comedy Central – their topic was Bloggers. Even if the authors intended to make fun of the Bloggers, they brought up some interesting points concerning the made-up fight between bloggers and journalists. Among these jokes is one comment on most bloggers who are however responsible correspondents and are focussed on niche reporting fields. These niches are surely not included in the major daily newspapers or the local town newspapers, but still these bloggers are using the internet media to build their news network. The general problem of these „attack bloggers“ is found in their behaviour and news posting: „They have no credibility. All they have is facts.“ All the bloggers do is gathering, collating and publishing accurate information which is found in our daily life in respect to companies, the government, individuals, society, etc. – all of this is published to the genera public audience. (via Anke Gröner, via onegoodmovie)

Visiting the Buch Blog, I strumbled upon the idea of „Blog Awareness“ found in a small debate on girlizine (german). The author describes the idea on how to push your blog with small chunks of blog entries in order to be omnipresent on the bloghoster’s main page which shows a list of all recently updated blogs. I consider such as blog spamming and commented the following:

Eigentlich ist soetwas schon eine Art Blog-Spam, wenn sich jeder über die zentrale Seite eines Bloghosters konsequent in die Öffentlichkeit schieben möchte, indem „Kurzeinträge“ im minutiösen Abstand gemacht werden. Das man sich mit diesem Verhalten auf Dauer die Leserschaft abspenstig macht ist schon vorprogrammiert. Wer will denn schon im 5 Minuten Takt lesen, dass jemand gerade ein Brot ist und über Gott und die Welt nachdenkt, danach sich ein Pfeifchen anzündet und über das politische Ambiente im TV unterhält, nur um zu wissen, dass gerade Klopause ist?

In the end, you only destroy your own reputation as blogger by becoming a spammer on your own. Instead of creating useful or interesting content, you become redundant to the readers.