Use Your Language Day

2) so the language was forbidden to be spoken. Although it wasn't my first language, I feel its my native language considering without forced assimilation or slavery my family would still be speaking it fluently. Would it be okay for me to use this as my language? I feel its very important for my culture, and I hope to be much more fluent in Cherokee by may of next year.

Hello! The FAQ can be found here and in the link at the top of the page, in the navigation bar. It occurs to me that maybe you’re on mobile, which might be the problem, so I have added an additional link to the description! Hope that helps.

I did say I was not going to mod this year, because this day has become much more time consuming that I originally signed up for, but I’m going to for this, since this is a question that comes from some original phrasing of mine.

I definitely see your point, since that is the reason why I don’t tag my own posts in my own language on my own blog every other day of the year -- I am not a native english speaker, so my language comes as a part of me as a blogger. Over the years I came to value the tags more as a way of connecting people who were participating with each other, and especially for people speaking the same language to find each other. Since anglocentrism is so isolating for all of us non-native speakers on this website. 

In hindsight, the original phrasing was poor, and I see where the concept itself has bad implications, so I apologise for that. 

I do still think tagging can be valuable for community building purposes, like I mentioned, and my original accessibilty concern was in reference to not inadvertedly causing sensory overload for anyone. So that’s where that was coming from. If you have any suggestions on where to go from here, I’d be happy to know. In the meantime, I’m going to talk to the current mods to edit the 2017 post, and we’re going to keep the tagging strictly as a community building suggestion (the FAQ is already up to that with that concept, fortunately).

For those of you who are new to Use Your Language Day, it’s a celebration of linguistic diversity on Tumblr that has been organised on the 7th of May every year since 2014. The idea behind it is that users give up blogging in English for 24 hours and opt to use their native language (or for native English speakers: any other language[s] they speak/are learning) instead. It’s a lot of fun for everyone involved and always great to see new friendships formed through the use of languages other than English.

If you intend on participating, you can tag your posts with #use your language day or #uyld, if you wish to connect with other participants. If you want to find other people speaking your language, the suggested language tags are #uyld: [language] (e.g. “uyld: italiano” or “uyld: français”)

This is probably the first time since we started that I’m going to have to tell you that I don’t think that’s a good idea.

If you look at the ‘statement’ of UYLD, if you will, it was established to do two things: 1) to celebrate our native cultures and 2) to counter the primarily US-centric way things run on tumblr. 

Of course it’s broadened a bit, looking at the other questions in the FAQ.

But the core of it remains, yes, culture and heritage. So I hope you see why I feel conlangs would be out of place.

Scusami, ma continuo a rileggere cercando di capire, perchè nonostante tutto lo spagnolo lo capisco anche abbastanza bene (anche se non lo parlo) quindi probabilmente sono i concetti che mi sfuggono.

Sono consapevole del contesto eurocentrista/sassone/imperialista, è esattamente la ragione per cui questo giorno esiste. Ho parlato, in passato, anche della pressione dell’USA-centrismo e del problema di comunicazione/accessibilità che ci costringe a usare l’inglese per farci capire su questo sito. Sarebbe proprio questo il punto.

Forse ti sei fattx un’idea sbagliata di chi sono io (leggendo il tuo altro commento sul post generale) o del come sia sorta quest’idea. E’ sorta perchè mi sono lamentata io di non poter usare la *mia* lingua (questa) e ho detto, un po’ per gioco, che forse io e tutti i miei amici (anche loro nella mia stessa situazione) potevamo provare a parlare in lingua per una giornata e vedere l’effetto che avrebbe fatto sugli anglosassoni, che si sarebbero trovati a non capire nulla. Il post poi è andato virale. 

Please remember that questions that are already answered in the FAQ will be disregarded. I’m sorry if this comes off as rude, but replying to all takes time and effort.

As I’ve registered a resurgence of reblogs in the old 2014 post, I’ve decided it’s time to make an official 2016 post. Yes, if there’s need, we’re coming back this year! Rules are the same as always. For newcomers:

What: Use Your Language Day (UYLD),  a day for everyoe whose native language is not English to let down their hair and celebrate and use that language for 24 for hours.

When: May 7th, midnight to midnight, according to your time zone. Yes we do know that May 7th isn’t a Wednesday.

How: Starting midnight, your time zone, you can star blogging/tagging/replying in your native language. The fun bit is when your Spanish-speaking mutual comes into your askbox speaking Spanish, and you reply in German and everybody abuses Google Translate.

Why: A lot of us feel like we’re obliged to write in English all the time, and while that may not be true (we’re always free to use our own native languages after all), social pressure and habit come into play. It’s just how it’s done on Tumblr. Some of us also do it for the sake of accessibility, so doing it too often sometimes isn’t an option. UYLD is a day to let loose and reconnect with our cultures (especially for those who are disconnected from their native culture, because of migration, linguistic imperialism etc.)

But...: If you have any doubts or questions, PLEASE READ THE FAQ. Questions that are already covered in the FAQ will be disregarded. If you have a never-before-seen original question then ask this blog! I’m always interested in suggestions/feedback regarding inclusivity and accessibility.

Tagging: The tag is gonna be #Use You Language Day if you want tag your posts with that, and find other people talking about UYLD. To find fellow speakers, look/post into #uyld: [your language] (example: #uyld: italiano). 

Please make sure you tag all your posts “use your language day” or “uyld” or some variation thereof, if you are able, so that if people need to blacklist for accessibility reasons they can do so. This is about having fun, not distressing other people.

On this blog, search #uyld blog psa for updates, #uyld replies for things other people have asked last year, and #uyld debates for language/UYLD-related discussion. There are also tags for a variety of other topics which can be found in our tags page.

Once again, PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU READ THE FAQ.

a translation of the phrase ‘‘I would like one loaf of bread, please’’ in your native language

the name of your language