Languages on the Internet
This article looks at the languages that are used on the Internet .
About half of all Internet pages on the World Wide Web are in English, with some offering other languages as well. Other commonly used languages are Russian , German , Spanish , French , Japanese , Portuguese , Italian and Persian . Of the more than 7000 languages available , only a few hundred are used for websites on the World Wide Web.
Internet pages by language
In March 2018, W3Techs estimated the voice distribution as a percentage of the 10 million Internet pages with the most unique visits on the Internet, which were classified by Alexa Internet . The results can be found in the following table:
| space | language | Share of all websites in percent |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | 54% |
| 2 | Russian | 6% |
| 3 | German | 5.9% |
| 4th | Spanish | 4.9% |
| 5 | French | 4.0% |
| 6th | Japanese | 3.4% |
| 7th | Portuguese | 2.9% |
| 8th | Italian | 2.3% |
| 9 | Persian | 2.0% |
| 10 | Polish | 1.8% |
| 11 | Chinese | 1.7% |
| 12 | Dutch | 1.2% |
| 13 | Turkish | 1.2% |
| 14th | Czech | 1.0% |
| 15th | Korean | 0.9% |
| 16 | Vietnamese | 0.7% |
| 17th | Arabic | 0.6% |
| 18th | Greek | 0.5% |
| 19th | Hungarian | 0.5% |
| 20th | Swedish | 0.5% |
| 21st | Romance languages | 0.4% |
| 22nd | Slovak | 0.4% |
| 23 | Danish | 0.3% |
| 24 | Indonesian | 0.3% |
| 25th | Finnish | 0.3% |
| 26th | Thai | 0.3% |
| 27 | Bulgarian | 0.2% |
| 28 | Ukrainian | 0.2% |
| 29 | Hebrew | 0.2% |
| 30th | Norwegian | 0.2% |
| 31 | Croatian | 0.2% |
| 32 | Lithuanian | 0.1% |
| 33 | Serbian | 0.1% |
| 34 | Norwegian | 0.1% |
| 35 | Slovenian | 0.1% |
| 36 | Catalan | 0.1% |
| 37 | Latvian | 0.1% |
| 38 | Estonian language | 0.1% |
| 39 | Hindi | 0.1% |
| 40 | Azerbaijani | 0.1% |
All other languages were estimated to have a share of less than 0.1%. Since some websites contain several languages, an exact result cannot be achieved.
Internet users by language
In April 2019, InternetWorldStats estimated the language distribution of Internet users as follows:
| space | language | Number of internet users | Share of all internet users in percent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | English | 1.105.919.154 | 25.2% |
| 2 | Chinese | 863.230.794 | 19.3% |
| 3 | Spanish | 344,448,932 | 7.9% |
| 4th | Arabic | 226,595,470 | 5.2% |
| 5 | Portuguese | 171.583.004 | 3.9% |
| 6th | Indonesian / Malaysian | 169,685,798 | 3.9% |
| 7th | French | 144.695.288 | 3.3% |
| 8th | Japanese | 118,626,672 | 2.7% |
| 9 | Russian | 109,552,842 | 2.5% |
| 10 | German | 92,304,792 | 2.1% |
| 1-10 | Top 10 world languages | 3,346,642,747 | 76.3% |
| - | Other languages | 1,039,842,794 | 23.7% |
| total | 4,386,485,541 | 100% |
In a study from the year 2000, the planned language Esperanto made it to place 40 of the languages with the most search queries in a search engine (place 27 of the languages with the Latin alphabet ).
development
The number of English-speaking users has recorded a lower growth rate compared to other languages since the turn of the millennium. The online use of English rose by around 281 percent from 2001 to 2011. This is a slower growth rate than Spanish (743 percent), Chinese (1277 percent), Russian (1826 percent), or Arabic (2501 percent) over the same period.
The proportion of English-language websites also recorded returns. Since English-language websites are often multilingual, it is doubted that English-language websites make up more than 50% of the Internet and it is assumed that content will later be optimized for other languages. A UNESCO report from 2009, in which the languages of websites were monitored for twelve years from 1996 to 2008, showed a steady decline in the share of English websites from 75 percent in 1998 to 45 percent in 2005. In 2015 However, the proportion was around 55 percent measured by W3Techs. One reason for this bias, in addition to the methods used in the evaluation and various data sets, could be that search engines block more English-language websites from the search index than in other languages.
Internet language
In addition to the standard languages, there are also separate languages on the Internet, e.g. B. through emoticons , emojis , emotes , Internet memes , hashtags , abbreviations and various forms of network jargon (e.g. gamer language ), which can usually be derived from English or figuratively.
See also:
See also
literature
- Torsten Siever, Peter Schlobinski, Jens Runkehl: Websprache.net: Language and communication in the Internet, Gruyter , 2015, ISBN 9783110181104
- David Crystal: Language and the Internet, Cambridge University , 2006, ISBN 9780521868594
Web links
- Languages on the Internet at internetworldstats.com
- 12 years of observation by UNESCO
- Language distribution on the Internet on Statista
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Usage Statistics and Market Share of Content Languages for Websites, June 2019. Retrieved June 13, 2019 .
- ↑ a b c Twelve years of measuring linguistic diversity in the Internet: balance and perspectives | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved June 13, 2019 .
- ↑ a b Historical trends in the usage of content languages for websites, June 2019. Retrieved June 13, 2019 .
- ↑ Summary by world area. Retrieved June 13, 2019 .
- ^ Top Ten Internet Languages in The World - Internet Statistics. Retrieved June 13, 2019 .
- ↑ Julien Nioche, Gregory Grefenstette: Estimation of English and non-English language use on the WWW . June 23, 2000, arxiv : cs / 0006032v1 (English).
- ↑ The foreign language internet is good for business By Alexandru Rotaru - Scott McLay's SEO Blog. April 7, 2013, accessed June 13, 2019 .
- ↑ Twelve years of measuring linguistic diversity in the Internet: balance and perspectives | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved June 13, 2019 .
- ↑ NET.LANG Réussir le cyberespace multilingue. Retrieved June 13, 2019 .