Top Languages of the Internet

Internet accessMore and more users are plugging into the Internet worldwide. However, estimating the number of speakers of the world's languages is difficult because many people are bilingual or multilingual and can use English or other global languages to surf the Internet. For instance, people who use English on the Internet are not limited to English-speaking countries but form a community of users world-wide.




Top ten Internet languagesAccording to Internet World Stats, the top ten languages on the Internet, listed below, account for 81.8% of all Internet use. English is the dominant language, accounting for almost 30% of Internet users, with Chinese a distant runner-up. This usage information is based on data published by Nielsen//NetRatings, International Telecommunications Union, and Computer Industry Almanac.
Further statistics that include penetration, the ratio of Internet users to total number of speakers of the language, as well as growth are given in the table below. German has the highest penetration, while Arabic has experienced the greatest growth.
Languages
% of all Internet Users
Penetration*
User Growth ( 2000 - 2007)
English
29.9%
28.6 %
138.5 %
Chinese
14%
11.3 %
374.6 %
Spanish
8.0%
17.0 %
253.4 %
Japanese
7.9%
67.1%
83.3 %
German
5.4%
61.3 %
113.2 %
French
5.0%
14.1 %
349.0 %
Portuguese
3.1%
14.6 %
349.6 %
Korean
3.1%
45.3 %
78.0 %
Italian
2.8%
51.7 %
133.1 %
Arabic
2.6%
8.4 %
930.2 %
Rest of world languages
18.2%
8.8 %
431.9 %
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