Ask HN: What's the state of the web in your (non-English) language? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's the state of the web in your (non-English) language?

9 pointsiamelgringo4 comments

I'm fluent in Spanish, because I was raised in Central America, but I don't surf the web in spanish, or use any spanish web apps. And, from talking to family in Mexico, they don't use the web in spanish much either aside from spanish versions of YouTube, local newspapers, etc...

I know that e-commerce really hasn't taken off in countries in Central and South America, because the use of credit cards is not as wide-spread as it is in the US. The shipping infrastructure in many countries of Central and South America is also very limited.

I'd love to hear perspectives or anecdotes from non-English users of the web. Do you surf bilingually? Do you use non-English versions of common web apps, or do you use other sites/applications that aren't in English yet? What web apps exist in English that you'd love to have in your native language?

What's the state of the web in your native language?

It seems to me that if you need to get some technical information, you need to understand english. That's the main reason why i learned english. I'm Québécois (Canada). The french web is not bad i think. But it's not the english Web. There's a lot less content in french. But there is still some nice communities and forums in some France-based portals.

I'm from the Netherlands and I'd say the Dutch web is very healthy and developed. There are only about 16 million Dutch, but you can pretty much get all you need without visiting an English website.

www.tweakers.net - A big IT-focussed news site with a great community and even better features (e.g. complete price listings of all Dutch electronics webshops for easy comparisons including webshop reviews. Is there an English equivalant to this?).

www.hyves.nl - Our own social networking site that gained popularity before Facebook or MySpace could.

www.nu.nl - Very basic, very popular generic Dutch news site. Everyone I now reads this.

www.uitzendinggemist.nl - Online repeats of recent TV shows.

www.9292ov.nl - THE integrated route-planner for public transport. Combines all trains, trams, buses and ferries timetables to extract the perfect route.

Also every Dutch company or institution has a professionally developed website these days.

Im mexican living in Mexico City; Theres a lot of noise in the web in spanish, you find a lot of wannabes and a lot of people discovering the internet and thinking theyre going to magically get rich. I've read blogs about dev/hacker gettogethers here in Mexico, but havent found anything cool yet. If theres someone interested in doing something in Mexico, drop a line.

Also, I do almost all of my surfing in english, I buy online a lot, lots of people here in Mexico have credit cards (at least in Mexico City) so theres definitively a big opportunity here. The web here feels like The Web in the US circa 1994, so you pretty much know where are thing going. Thats a great advantage.

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