Polyglot Facebook

As I was drifting off to sleep thinking of my Facebook Friends (I do that sometimes) it struck me how many different countries they come from. In the morning I counted them up—twenty-eight national origins (stretching a point, I suppose, by counting England, Scotland and Wales as distinct nationalities). Then I estimated that between them, my friends were regularly communicating in twenty different languages from five continents. Although I don't have any Africans on my list yet, I should have counted Africa, making it six continents, because I have frequently read messages and seen photos posted from there. In fact I travel the world every week browsing through people's photo albums. It's an education.

I'm not sure I correctly identified all the languages I counted (English, Flemish, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Croatian, Russian, Estonian, Indian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Arabic, Malay, Dutch, Romanian, German, Welsh, Hindi) and I may have come across more on Facebook without knowing it. The people on my current Friends list are—in alphabetical order so as to avoid accusations of favouritism—from Australia, Barbados, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, England, Estonia, Germany, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Macedonia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Romania, Spain, Scotland, Switzerland, Ukraine, the USA and Wales, although some did move away from their home countries before I met them and others have gone back to their home countries since I met them. Others again have moved to countries not yet on my list.

I posted a status report about my multiracial friends, adding Isn't that a wonderful thought? What is yet more wonderful is that I have noticed nothing extraordinary about this until now.