Writing in a Foreign Language: How a English Gave Me My Voice
The article discusses the author's journey of finding their writing voice through learning English. Initially struggling with their native language, the author discovered a passion for English, which allowed for clearer and more concise expression. This transformation led to a deeper appreciation for language and writing, ultimately inspiring the author to share their work publicly.
- ▪The author initially struggled with reading and writing in German due to a minor reading disability.
- ▪Learning English opened up new opportunities for the author, allowing them to explore a wider range of literature and ideas.
- ▪The author now thinks and writes primarily in English, finding it more approachable and precise than their native Swiss German.
Hacker News (Newest) files mainly under programming. We currently carry 5,306 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Simon Späti's Second Brain |
| Canonical URL | https://www.ssp.sh/brain/writing-in-a-foreign-language/ |
| Publication time | Fri, 29 May 2026 08:27:50 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-29T08:49:59.808Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-29T08:49:59.808Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | UmP165YKnmPN |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Second Brain Search Search IconIcon to open search Light Mode Dark Mode Blog Vault Newsletter Writing in a Foreign Language: How a English Gave Me My Voice Last updatedUpdated: May 29, 2026 by Simon Späti · CreatedCreated: Sep 19, 2025 Table of Contents The Time in Copenhagen Before that What Thinking in a Foreign Language Taught Me Further Reads This is how I found My Writing Voice and style. I initially read a lot of English books because I didn’t know the language well when I was in CPH and was learning it. Only after I learned that I enjoy the English Language a lot, even more so for writing. Also, Haruki Murakami refined and actually found his voice when writing in English, with a very limited vocabulary, and then translated it back into Japanese.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Simon Späti's Second Brain.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from Simon Späti's Second Brain
