There are a few questions that have been spinning around in my head for a while now.

Does blogging in English improve the quality of my blog? Does it improve the quality of my English?

I'm an Afrikaans speaking South African. Afrikaans is my home language and I speak it every day.

But the internet has always been English to me. I know there are a lot of Afrikaans websites and blogs out there, but yet the net still seems more English to me. It's the same way that computer jargon sounds ten times worse in Afrikaans. The net (to me at least) is English.

So there are a few things I had to come to grips with first when I first started blogging. I always worried about my vocabulary and whether I would be able to express myself in the way that I wanted to.

Another thing that bothered me is the common mistakes that most Afrikaners make when writing in English.

I decided to take a look at my posts of a year ago. There were two common mistakes (I believe) that I frequently made.

• The use of too many commas. This is something that I think a lot of Afrikaans speaking people fall prey to. Commas are a natural part of Afrikaans and used in so many different situations. In English, they are commonly considered to be overkill. Looking over my previous posts, I put commas almost everywhere! I would like to think that this has improved recently.
• I also tend to over-hyphenate things. Afrikaans is a language where multiple nouns are pronounced and written as one word. Take for instance: 'betonbrugkonstruksiemaatskappy'. These are multiple nouns strung together but they are still describing a single entity. In Afrikaans, words describing a single entity are written as one word. The same word in English: "Concrete Bridge Construction Company". Here I have to ask myself the question: "Would it be better to hyphenate?" I don't believe there is an easy answer to this question.

And finally, there's an English language phenomenon that has bothered me for years. I have already 'broken' the rule in the previous sentence. Do you see what I did wrong?

You are not supposed to start a sentence with a conjunction like 'and' or 'but'. But I think it's nonsense!

I remember when I asked my English teacher (years ago) why we shouldn't start with a conjunction, she clearly told me that it is a grammar rule and therefore correct. Her explanation could be summed up in one sentence: "Because it's always been done that way."

I believe that written language should be pretty close or as close as possible to the spoken language. I see there are other people on the web who also feel that this rule is outdated and does not make sense any more.

So has blogging in English improved the use of my language? I would like to believe so.

Let's face it, even though Afrikaans is a beautiful language, I don't think it will become the language of the web or the business language. English is more widespread and definitely a more international language than Afrikaans.

Furthermore, I enjoy blogging in English. There are so many words that are beautiful and I love to use them from time to time. Words like 'plethora' and 'gossamer'. Obviously I try not to over-use these words as one can get too much of a good thing.

There is one other factor that I believe has a huge impact on my use of the English language. I read a lot of books. In fact, I believe this to be the biggest factor.

Yes, writing in English does make you more attentive to your own use of the language. But it doesn't matter how attentive you are if you don't know what the correct way of writing is in the first place.

Read more books. Trust me, it will only do you good.