Languages on the Internet

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English speakers often assume that everyone speaks English. Whilst this is obviously incorrect, the recent research still places English as the number one on-line language in the world. If the internet use in India develops at its current pace, we may well soon see a changing of the guard in terms of languages used online. English still remains strong, but growth in the use of Chinese online is strong, closely followed by Spanish, then Japanese, Portuguese and German. The presence of Arabic on the web is also growing but slowly, despite it being the lingua franca of several countries spread across Asia and Africa. Internet penetration based on population, per language, is the highest for Japan and Germany, followed by Korea, and remaining quite low for France.

Indeed, in 5 years time Chinese will be the dominant language online, with more users than English! So what impact does this have on us? A greater level of Chinese content online may well fuel the spread of the Chinese language worldwide with many countries already adopting policies that are aimed at teaching students Chinese. Furthermore, with a greater level of Chinese users online, businesses need to ensure that there messages through communication channels such as websites are properly addressing all online users, not just English speakers. None the less, the developments in the languages used online is an exciting time for everyone and we look forward to seeing what the outcomes are.