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Languages used on the Internet

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Graph of Internet users per 100 inhabitants between 1997 and 2007 by International Telecommunication Union
Country population penetration of Internet use in 2007
2007 distribution of Internet users by country (CIA)

This article provides information relating to the number of people who use the Internet by language, nationality, geography, etc.

Languages used on the Internet

Most Internet users speak the English language as a native or secondary language. Although the total number of native English speakers in the world is about 322 million, English is spoken as a second language by up to 1.2 billion people around the world. They make their contributions to the Internet in their own language as well as in English. A study on the presence of Romance languages on the Internet, published by the Latin Union in collaboration with FUNREDES, showed that as of November 2007, 45% of the webpages were written in English, 3.8% in Spanish, 4.41% in French, 2.66% in Italian, 1.39% in Portuguese, 0.28% in Romanian and 5.9% in German.[1]

Chinese is the most spoken native language on Earth and the second most-used language by Internet users. According to CNNIC, the number of Chinese Internet users increased by 42% in 2008 to a total of 298 million. This high rate of growth is expected to have a significant impact on the Internet in the near future.[citation needed]

Notably absent from the table below is Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India. This is due to the high numbers of English educated Indians. Virtually all Indian colleges and universities teach in English. English, along with Hindi, is one of the two official languages of India. The Indian population online is also increasing rapidly.

The source of the figures in the table below is Global Reach[2]. These are estimates of the world online population by language for September 2004.

Position Language Users (millions) Users Total Population (millions) GDP (b) World Economy GDP Per Capita
1 English 295.4 35.2% 508
2 Chinese 110.0 13.7% 874 $6,328 13% $7,200
3 Spanish 86.0 12% 410 $2,500 8.9% $7,100
4 Japanese 67.1 8.4% 125 $3,400 8% $27,200
5 German 55.3 6.9% 101 $2,679 5.8% $26,800
6 French 33.9 4.2% 100 $1,517 4.2% $19,700
7 Korean 31.3 3.9% 78 $887 2% $11,400
8 Italian 30.4 3.3% 62 $1,251 3.6% $20,100
9 Portuguese 29.4 3.3% 176 $1,487 3.6% $8,400
10 Russian 22 2.7% 167 $822 1.8% $4,900
11 Dutch 18.9 2.4% 27 $575 1.4% $28,500
12 Malay 14.2 1.8% 229 $258 1%
13 Arabic 13.5 1.7% 300 $678 1.6% $4,200
14 Polish 9.6 1.2% 44 $359 $8,100
15 Swedish 7.7 9 $237 $26,300
16 Thai 6.9 46 $406 $8,800
17 Turkish 6.8 67.4 $431 $6,400
18 Vietnamese 5.8 84
19 Persian 4.6 71 $84
20 Romanian 4.4 26 $108 $4,200
21 Czech 3.8 12 $121 $10,000
22 Hebrew 3.8 5.2 $132 $21,000
23 Danish 2.9 5.4 $171 $31,700
24 Finnish 2.8 6 $142 $23,600
25 Hungarian 2.5 10 $96 $9,600
26 Greek 2.4 12 $189 $15,800
27 Catalan 2.4 6.6
28 Norwegian 2.1 5 $136 $27,200
29 Slovak 1.8 5.6 $47 $8,700
30 Serbo-Croatian 1.0 20
31 Ukrainian 0.9 47 $115 $2,300
32 Punjabi 0.8 38
33 Slovene 0.8 2 $22.90 $10,900
34 Icelandic 0.2 0.3 $6 $23,500
World Total 801.4 6460 $41,400


See also

References

  1. ^ "Limbile şi culturile pe Internet - Studiu 2007 (Languages and cultures on the Internet - 2007 study)" (in Romanian). Latin Union. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
  2. ^ Global Reach (now unavailable); see the last version (September 30, 2004) at the Internet Archive.
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