Languages On The Web

Top Ten Online Language Populations

Statistics compiled and updated on 31^st September 2009 by Internet World Stats shows that the top 10 languages on the web were:

1. English: 478,442,379 (27.6% of total worldwide internet users) with a 237.0% growth rate between 2000 and 2009.
2. Chinese: 383,650,713 (22.1%) / +1,087.7%
3. Spanish: 136,524,063 (7.9%) / +650.9%
4. Japanese: 95,979,000 (5.5%) / +103.9%
5. French: 78,972,116 (4.6%) / +547.4%
6. Portuguese: 73,052,600 (4.2%) / +864.3%
7. German: 64,593,535 (3.7%) / +133.2%
8. Arabic: 50,422,300 (2.9%) / +1,907.9%
9. Russian: 45,250,000 (2.6%) / +1,359.7%
10. Korean: 37,475,800 (2.2%) / +96.8%

Arabic (+1,907.9%), Russian (+1,359.7%) and Chinese (+1,087.7%) are the three languages that recorded the biggest growth rates between 2000 and 2009. (Internet World Stats, November 2009)

Other Languages On The Web

An English-only website is no longer sufficient, according to eConsultancy. For those under the illusion that their potential customers are all surfing the web in English, it is time to realize that the language of the web is multilingual.

People prefer to search and interact online in their own language: it's natural and comfortable. And the more relaxed a potential customer is when they're browsing an online store, the more likely they will make a purchase. That is, of course, if they even find your site in the first place. (HOTELMARKETING.COM, June 2009)

Judging by the number of posts, it seems that the universal blogging language is Japanese. Japanese are the most prolific posters in the world; they are often frequent bloggers (often by commuters on mobile phones). More blog posts were made in Japanese than English during the past three years, according to Technorati data cited in a Washington Post article. That is despite the almost 5:1 ratio of English to Japanese speakers worldwide.

The Post article said that the Japanese tended to write shorter and more frequently than US bloggers, and that the Japanese often posted anonymously. The Japanese were about five times as likely as Americans, the British or the French to read blogs weekly, but far less likely to act on what they read, according to Edelman data. (eMarketer, December 2007)

Despegar.com, an online travel site dedicated to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking communities worldwide, has over 4 million registered users and 2.5 million unique visitors per month. In 2007, the company expects to process 700,000 bookings, 70% higher than in 2006. Despegar.com said that they have been growing very fast for the last four years and they have placed themselves among the top five leisure travel agencies in the region. In the major countries of the region, they have become the largest leisure travel agency. (m-Travel.com, June 2007)

The distinction between blogs and mainstream media (traditional websites) is vanishing rapidly. In fact, some of the most visited sites on the web are now blogs and most web surfers don’t even realize they are reading blogs, according to Technorati.

The report found that 22 of the 100 most popular Web sites in the fourth quarter of 2006 were blogs, up from 12 in the third quarter. Technorati currently tracks 70 million blogs (up from 35 million blogs less than a year ago) and claims 120,000 new blogs are being created every day. Although Technorati does admit that the rate of growth is slowing.

Blogging is an international phenomenon, with 37% of all blogs in Japanese. English-language blogs rank second, at 33%, and Chinese is the third-most-blogged language, at 8%. Blogging has even caught on in Iran. Farsi is now the 10th-most-popular blogging language. (eMarketer, April 2007)

Language is key to Latinos online. Whether Latinos use the internet is closely related to whether they are bilingual, and to which language is dominant, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Among Latinos who are English-dominant, 78% use the internet. Among bilingual Latinos, 76% use the internet. Fewer than a third (32%) of Spanish-dominant Hispanic adults are internet users.

Pew's analysis indicates that being born outside of the 50 states is an independent factor that decreases the likelihood of going online. Of US-born Latinos, 76% go online, compared with 43% of those born outside the country. As a related factor, foreign-born Latinos tend to be Spanish-dominant, which again points back to language as a determinant of internet use.

As with all ethnicities, education level is closely associated with internet use. Online use is about 90% for all college graduates, regardless of ethnicity. For those who did not graduate from high school, the numbers are reversed: less than a third are online. This difference is more pronounced among Latinos, as 41% have not completed high school, according to the study. This compares with one out of five African-Americans who have not graduated from high school, and one out of 10 whites.

Latino internet use is also associated with country of origin. Those from South America are most likely to be online (70%), while only 52% of Latinos of Mexican descent are. Most Latinos who are offline say they simply do not have internet access. Price and time are also factors.

eMarketer believes that even though many Hispanic internet users speak English, they still want advertising and online content that speaks to them in a culturally relevant way. Marketers will reach some Hispanic people by advertising on general-market sites, but they should also consider sites that are in English but are specifically aimed at the Hispanic population. (eMarketer, March 2007)

Google's language translation service Google Translate has greatly improved with the switched to its own machine translation system, available now for all the 25 language pairs available on the service. The new system works great for simple phrases like hotel descriptions.

Google switched the translation system from Systran to its own machine translation system for all the 25 language pairs available on the site. Until now, Google used its own system only for Arabic, Chinese, and Russian.

The Google Operating System blog provides a link to compare the new Google Translate with Babel Fish, a site that uses Systran to provide translations. While still not perfect, the new translation system works more accurately, especially with simple phrases used for hotel descriptions. (HOTELMARKETING.COM, October 2007)

Delegates to a United Nations summit, held in Greece, have warned that the predominant use of English language on the internet may root out the use of other languages on the Worldwide Web. They said a chunk of the world's population may become "voiceless" if the trend continued.

Some 90% of 6,000 languages (in use today) are not represented on the internet, according to Yoshinori Imai of NHK, Japan's Broadcasting Corporation.

Sociologists and linguists are concerned that software developers also predominantly use English when they create any program. However, the United Nations and other organizations such as ICANN (internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the non-profit organization that manages the internet's technical root, say that addressing multilingualism over the internet was a huge technical challenge and that any miss-step could lead to fragmentation of internet community into non-interoperable components. (WUG*BYTES, November 2006)