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The predominance of English on the Internet—English language content and English language users—has fueled the rise of the Internet as a means of communication, information dissemination and entertainment. This article details statistics of Internet linguistic patterns and their impact. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...
The most-used language on the Internet is English. ...
Numbers considered
In considering which languages dominate the Internet two statistics are considered: the first language of Internet users and the language of actual material posted on the web.
Internet users Internet user percentages usually focus on raw comparisons of the first language of those who access the Internet. Just as important is a consideration of second and foreign language users; i.e., the first-language of a user does not necessarily reflect which language they regularly employ when using the Internet.
First language users English language users appear to be a plurality of Internet users, consistently cited as around one-third of the overall (near one billion). This reflects the relative affluence of English-speaking countries and high Internet penetration rates in them.
This lead may be eroding, due mainly to a rapid increase of Chinese users,[1] which broadly parallels China's advance on other economic fronts. In fact, if first language speakers are compared, Chinese ought, in time, to outstrip English by a wide margin (1.3 billion and still climbing for Chinese, 300+ million but static for English).
First language users among other relatively affluent countries appear generally stable, the two largest being German and Japanese who each have between 5 - 10% of the overall share.
Second and foreign language users If a gradual decline in English first language users is inevitable it does not necessarily follow that English will not continue to be the language of choice for those accessing the Internet. As Chinese closes the gap with English it must be noted that:
There is an enormous pool of English second and foreign language speakers who employ the language in technical, governmental and educational spheres[2] and access the Internet in English. A classic example is India. Being linguistically divided into many small groups, none of the native languages could supplant English as the language of the elite group (those working in the prestigious professions). With economic growth, English has begun exploding as the emerging lingua franca in India. In 1995, perhaps only 4% were truly fluent in English (a still impressive 40 million).[3] A decade later, by 2005, India had the world's largest English speaking and understanding population[4] and second largest "Fluent English" speaking population (led only by U.S.). It is expected to have the world's largest number of English speakers within a decade.[5] To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
Chinese is rarely employed as a lingua franca outside of China by non-ethnic Chinese; even countries bordering the country or with large Chinese minorities (Mongolia, South Korea, Malaysia) tend toward English as a commercial and educational language. Further, China is not truly monoglot: Standard Mandarin is official but different spoken variants of Chinese are often mutually unintelligible; the diaspora disproportionately speaks Cantonese. There is, however, an existing written standard that serves as a common written language. Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ...
Han Chinese (Simplified: 汉; Traditional: 漢; Pinyin: hàn) is a term which refers to the majority ethnic group within China and the largest single human ethnic group in the world. ...
Standard Mandarin is the official Chinese spoken language used by the Peoples Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and Singapore. ...
Spoken Chinese The Chinese spoken language(s) comprise(s) many regional variants. ...
Overseas Chinese (è¯åƒ‘ in Pinyin: Huáqiáo, or è¯èƒž huábÄo, or 僑胞 qiáobÄo, or è¯è£” huáyì) are either ethnic Chinese or people of the Chinese nation (Zhonghua minzu) who live outside of China. ...
Cantonese (Traditional Chinese: 粵語; Simplified Chinese: 粤è¯]], Cantonese: Yuet6yue5; Mandarin pinyin: YuèyÇ”, lit. ...
In the future then, English and Chinese may have roughly equal positions at the top of the overall Internet first language users but English will likely continue to dominate as the default choice for those accessing the Internet in a second language.
Other world languages that could conceivably begin to challenge English include Spanish and Arabic, though it remains to be seen if these, too, will be largely isolated to first-language speakers on the Internet as is Chinese. The Arabic language (Arabic: ‎ transliterated: ), or simply Arabic (Arabic: ‎ transliterated: ), is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ...
Internet content One widely quoted figure for the amount of web content in English is 80%[6]—this enormous figure is somewhat self-re-enforcing (widely cited, it "becomes true") and is likely too high. Other sources show figures five to fifteen points lower, though still well over 50%.[7][8] There are two notable facts about these percentages:
The English web content is greater than the amount of first language English users by as much as 2 to 1. This underscores the degree to which second language users are employing English when using the Internet.
Given the enormous lead it already enjoys and its increasing use as lingua franca in other spheres English web content may continue to dominate even as English first-language Internet users decline. This is a classic positive feedback loop: new Internet users find it helpful to learn English and employ it on-line, thus reinforcing the language's prestige and forcing subsequent new users to learn English as well. (However, it is only fair to note that while this may be true at a global level, there is a rise of regional lingua francas as well. Spanish is increasingly used in Latin America, Arabic in North Africa and the Middle East, Chinese in East Asia, and so on.) Positive feedback is a type of feedback. ...
Certain other factors (some predating the medium's appearance) have propelled English into a majority web-content position. Most notable in this regard is the tendency for researchers and professionals to publish in English to ensure maximum exposure. The largest database of medical bibliographical information, for example, shows English was the majority language choice for the past forty years and its share has continually increased over the same period.[9] Again, this doesn't necessarily correlate to first-language statistics; the fact that non-Anglos regularly publish in English only reinforces the language's dominance.
Notes
External links
News and books
Future Of Global English The British Council is a partly UK Government-funded cultural relations organisation and a registered charity in the United Kingdom. ...
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