Yesterday when I was browsing through the IOIG website and analyzing keyword searches for visitors arriving on my site by typing “jioi” instead of “ioig” (JIOI being Jeux des îles de l’océan Indien or the French translation of Indian Ocean Island Games), it made me realize how weird some people might view our media (newspapers, TV, ezines, etc.). Think about it: the domain name is an English abbreviation of the games. They didn’t even register the French abbreviation to create a redirect. This is possibly why some people are ending up on my personal blog, instead of the actual official website of the games. Not that it bothers me. I enjoy the surge in traffic.There’s a reason why the IOIG site will be partly in English, and partly in French. Believe it or not, most Seychellois are more comfortable and more fluent in English than French. Not all, but most. Why? I don’t know. The Seychellois Creole is French-Creole, not English-Creole like Pidgin. So normally, if we had to have something out there for everyone to read, we’d probably write it in English. But the IOIG games is played amongst mostly Francophone countries, e.g. Madagascar, Reunion, Mayotte, Comoros. Maldives I’m not sure…and then we’ve got Mauritius…my ex-room mate was from Mauritius and she told me that English is actually their first official language but if you ever meet a Mauritian they will actually prefer to speak to you in French so I’ll have to personally place them in the Francophone before Anglophone category.
This is also the reason why our local newspaper contains articles in the three languages (Creole, English, French).
