Internet world users

INTERNET WORLD USERS BY LANGUAGE
Top 10 Languages

Internet World Stats presents its latest estimates for Internet Users by Language
Because of the importance of this research, and due to the lack of other sources, Internet World Stats publishes several tables and charts featuring analysis and details here below for the top ten languages and also for the detailed world languages in use bycountry.

Top Ten Languages Used in the Web
( Number of Internet Users by Language ) |
|
TOP TEN LANGUAGES
IN THE INTERNET | Internet Users
by Language | Internet
Penetration
by Language | Growth
in Internet
(2000 - 2010) | Internet Users
% of Total | World Population
for this Language
(2010 Estimate) |
English | 536,564,837 | 42.0 % | 281.2 % | 27.3 % | 1,277,528,133 |
Chinese| 444,948,013 | 32.6 % | 1,277.4 % | 22.6 % | 1,365,524,982 |
Spanish | 153,309,074 | 36.5 % | 743.2 % | 7.8 % | 420,469,703 |
Japanese | 99,143,700 | 78.2 % | 110.6 % | 5.0 % | 126,804,433 |
Portuguese | 82,548,200 | 33.0 % | 989.6 % | 4.2 % | 250,372,925 |
German | 75,158,584 | 78.6 % | 173.1 % | 3.8 % | 95,637,049 |
Arabic | 65,365,400 | 18.8 % | 2,501.2 % | 3.3 % | 347,002,991 |French | 59,779,525 | 17.2 % | 398.2 % | 3.0 % | 347,932,305 |
Russian | 59,700,000 | 42.8 % | 1,825.8 % | 3.0 % | 139,390,205 |
Korean | 39,440,000 | 55.2 % | 107.1 % | 2.0 % | 71,393,343 |
TOP 10 LANGUAGES | 1,615,957,333 | 36.4 % | 421.2 % | 82.2 % | 4,442,056,069 |
Rest of the Languages | 350,557,483 | 14.6 % | 588.5 % | 17.8 % | 2,403,553,891 |
WORLD TOTAL | 1,966,514,816 | 28.7 %| 444.8 % | 100.0 % | 6,845,609,960 |
(*) NOTES: (1) Top Ten Languages Internet Stats were updated for June 30 2010. (2) Internet Penetration is the ratio between the sum of Internet users speaking a language and the total population estimate that speaks that specific language. (3) The most recent Internet usage information comes from data published by Nielsen Online, InternationalTelecommunications Union, GfK, and other reliable sources. (4) World population information comes from the U.S. Census Bureau . (5) For definitions and navigation help in several languages, see the Site Surfing Guide. (6) Stats may be cited, stating the source and establishing an active link back to Internet World Stats. Copyright © 2010, Miniwatts Marketing Group. All rights reserved worldwide. |Examples for interpretation of the data:
- There are 99,143,700 Japanese speaking people using the Internet, this represents 5.0 % of all the Internet users in the world.
- Out of the estimated 126,804,433 population of the world that speaks Japanese, 78.2 % use the Internet.
- The number of Japanese Speaking Internet Users has grown 110.6 % in the last ten years (2000-2010). |

Tallying thenumber of speakers of the world's languages is an increasingly complex task, particularly with the push in many countries to teach English in their public schools. How many people can actually use the global language? David Graddol estimated a total of 750 million L1 (first or native language) plus L2 (second or nth language) speakers of English in his Future of English Report (pdf document) for theBritish Council. One of our subscribers, Martin Schell, has reviewed Prof. Braj Kachru's new book Asian Englishes which claims that India and China combined have over half a billion "users" of English.Indeed, many people are bilingual or multilingual, but here we assign only one language per person in order to have all the language totals add up to the total world population (zero-sum approach). Noadjustments have been made for infants or illiteracy in the Internet penetration rate calculations. Very few countries have 100% literacy. Australia, Denmark, Finland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Norway are six countries to mention. Regarding children, most are early Internet adopters (when they are given the chance to surf). |

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