We take it for granted that the most popular language on the Internet is English, since, after all, the Internet was an American creation. But thanks to the huge number of Internet users that China is adding each year, English will soon be replaced by Chinese as the most popular language on the Internet. (Just to clarify: People in China speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Wu, Min and an abundance of dialects, but the written language across the board is Chinese).
Last year, China added 36 million Internet users, bringing their total to 440 million users. The United States only has 220 million Internet users, but English is spoken in more countries than China, and so more websites are published in that language.
That shouldn't be much of a surprise, with China becoming an increasingly powerful country. China is now the largest space polluter and produces more greenhouse emissions than the United States, contributing to global warming.
The Next Web put together a pretty neat infographic about the most popular languages on the Internet based on information from Internet World Stats, an Internet marketing firm.
Of the 2 billion people who use the Internet each month, 537 million speak English primarily, while 444 million speak Chinese. But the Internet penetration among English speakers is 42 percent, while 42 percent of people who speak Chinese have access to the Internet. That means Chinese has a greater potential to expand than the English language.
As Gizmag points out, China has several policies in place to support the growth of the Chinese language. China's General Administration of Press and Publication web site recently announced that the mixing of foreign words in Chinese language publications without an accompanying Chinese language translation has been banned. That includes many uses of common English sayings, abbreviations and people that have become popular in Chinese language publications in recent years.
When exactly Chinese will become the most popular language on the Internet is less certain though. The Next Web predicts it will be sometime in the next five years, but thanks to some tech initiatives from the Obama administration, I'm not sure it will be so soon.
But when do you think Chinese will become the most popular language online? Or, are you convinced English will always be more popular? Let us know in the comments section below.
Photo: Grant Faint/Getty Images
Tags: Internet
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