Internet Top Ten Languages
Dear Reader,
Continuing with the new statistics and information from the Internet World
Stats, today we report about the top 10 languages in the web. This is original and exclusive research of interest to everyone involved with the globalized world we live in today.
Originally the official languages used at the United Nations (UN) were English and French. Later, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish were added. At present, these six languages are the official working languages at the United Nations for the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council as well as the Security Council.
A delegate may speak in any of the six official languages, and his or her speech is interpreted simultaneously into the other five languages, for the benefit of all the rest of delegates. Currently there are 192 Member States in the UN. The working languages at the UN Secretariat, however, are only two: English and French.
The Top Ten Internet Languages in our report include the six official UN languages, plus German, Japanese, Malay and Portuguese. We present a brief comment about these ten languages below. So without further delay, please enjoy this new issue of the IWS
Newsletter. | |
Internet Top Languages in 2013
The table below shows the growth between 2000 and 2013 for the Internet Top 10 Languages. It is interesting to see that the growth rate has been very different for the various languages. Most impressive is the very high growth rate for Arabic.Clicking on the language names will open additional information pages for each one.
|
World
Regions |
Internet
Users 2000 |
Internet
Users 2013 |
Growth %
2000-2013 |
|
ENGLISH |
140,760,619 |
800,625,314 |
468.8 % |
|
CHINESE |
32,303,000 |
649,375,491 |
1,910.3 % |
|
SPANISH |
18,181,100 |
222,406,379 |
1,123.3 % |
|
ARABIC |
2,512,900 |
135,610,819 |
5,296.6 % |
|
PORTUGUESE |
7,576,000 |
121,779,703 |
1,507.4 % |
|
JAPANESE |
47,080,000 |
109,626,672 |
132.9 % |
|
RUSSIAN |
3,100,000 |
87,476,747 |
2,721.8 % |
|
GERMAN |
27,518,358 |
81,139,942 |
194.9 % |
|
FRENCH |
11,998,400 |
78,891,813 |
557.5 % |
|
MALAY / INDONESIAN |
5,730,000 |
75,459,025 |
1,216.9 % |
|
TOTAL TOP TEN |
296,760,377 |
2,362,391,905 |
696.1 % |
|
OTHER LANGUAGES |
64,225,115 |
440,087,029 |
585.2 % |
|
WORLD TOTAL |
360,985,492 |
2,802,478,934 |
676.3 % |
|
Source: Internet World Stats, data accessed on September 24, 2014. |
Please take into consideration that the population changes all the time. This of course makes comparisons very difficult. In order to handle this situation, we use the 2014 Mid-Year population for the 2013 statistics. For the year 2000, mid-year 2000 figures were used for calculating the Internet penetration rates. |