One of the unexpected benefits of the blogging phenomenon has been the way that blog search engines such as Technorati have exposed the richness of the non-English web. Back in the olden days, when the internet was flat, you saw the web through your own linguistic filters - English was the dominant language and it spread as far as the mouse could click. Now there are vibrant Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and even Welsh communities online that are easily found and accessed. Wikipedia comes in 252 languages; Google search is available in over 100 languages. No longer do we live in linguistic silos unable to see or interact with speakers of other languages - instead, multilingualism is all around us.

But the web still errs towards a very basic view of language, assuming that language and nationality share the same borders and that people use language in an either/or manner. Reality is far more complex than that and in this video conversation I talk to bilingual language-blogger and social media consultant, Stephanie Booth (Climb To The Stars).

Stephanie will be discussing online multilingualism in more detail at Reboot, in Copenhagen from May 31 to June 1 2007. You can also watch her session on multilingualism at BlogCamp from March 07.