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INTERNET WORLD USERS BY LANGUAGE
Top 10 Languages
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Internet World Stats presents its latest estimates for
Internet Users by Language
Because of the importance of this research, and due to the lack of other sources, Internet
World Stats publishes several tables and charts featuring analysis and details here below
for the top ten languages and also for the detailed world languages in use by country.
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Top Ten
Languages Used in the Web - November 30, 2015
( Number of
Internet Users by Language )
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TOP TEN LANGUAGES
IN THE INTERNET
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Internet Users
by Language
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Internet
Penetration
(% Population)
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Users Growth
in Internet
(2000 - 2015)
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Internet Users
% of World Total
(Participation)
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World Population
for this Language
(2015 Estimate)
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English
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872,950,266
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62.4 %
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520.2 %
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25.9 %
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1,398,283,969
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Chinese
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704,484,396
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50.4 %
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2,080.9 %
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20.9 %
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1,398,335,970
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Spanish
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256,787,878
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58.2 %
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1,312.4 %
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7.6 %
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441,052,395
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Arabic
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168,176,008
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44.8 %
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6,592.5 %
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5.0 %
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375,241,253
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Portuguese
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131,903,391
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50.1 %
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1,641.1 %
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3.9 %
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263,260,385
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Japanese
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114,963,827
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90.6 %
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144.2 %
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3.4 %
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126,919,659
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Russian
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103,147,691
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70.5 %
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3,227.3 %
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3.1 %
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146,267,288
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Malay
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98,915,747
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34.5 %
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1,626.3 %
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2.9 %
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286,937,168
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French
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97,729,532
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25.4 %
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714.9 %
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2.9 %
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385,389,434
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German
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83,738,911
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87.8 %
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204.3 %
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2.5 %
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95,324,471
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TOP 10 LANGUAGES
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2,632,248,147
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53.5 %
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787.0 %
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78.2 %
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4,917,011,992
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Rest of the
Languages
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734,013,009
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31.3 %
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1,042.9 %
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21.8 %
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2,342,890,251
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WORLD TOTAL
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3,366,261,156
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46.4 %
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832.5 %
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100.0 %
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7,259,902,243
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NOTES: (1) Top Ten Languages Internet Stats were updated for
November 30 2015. (2) Internet Penetration is the ratio between
the sum of Internet users speaking a language and the total
population estimate that speaks that specific language. (3) The
most recent Internet usage information comes from data published
by Nielsen Online, International Telecommunications Union, GfK, and other reliable
sources. (4) World population information comes mainly from the
U.S. Census Bureau
and the
Eurostats
. (5) For
definitions, methodology and navigation help, please see the Site Surfing Guide. (6) These statistics may be cited, stating the
source and establishing an active link back to Internet World Stats. Copyright © 2016,
Miniwatts Marketing Group. All rights reserved worldwide.
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Examples for interpretation of the
data:
- There are 256,787,878 Spanish speaking people using
the Internet, this represents 7.6 % of all the Internet
users in the world.
- Out of the estimated 95,324,471 persons in the world that
speak German, 87.8 % use the Internet.
- The number of Japanese Speaking Internet Users has grown 144.2 %
in the last fifteen years (2000-2015).
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Tallying the number of
speakers of the world's languages is an increasingly complex
task, particularly with the push in many countries to teach
English in their public schools. How many people can actually use
the global language? David Graddol estimated a total of 750
million L1 (first or native language) plus L2 (second or nth
language) speakers of English in his
Future of English Report (pdf document) for the British Council.
One of our subscribers, Prof. Martin Schell, has reviewed Prof. Braj Kachru's
new book Asian Englishes
which claims that India and
China combined have over half a billion "users" of
English.
Indeed, many people are bilingual or multilingual, but here we assign
only one language per person in order to have all the language totals
add up to the total world population (zero-sum approach). No adjustments
have been made for infants or illiteracy in the Internet penetration
rate calculations. Very few countries have 100% literacy. Australia, Denmark,
Finland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Norway are six countries to mention.
Regarding children, most are early Internet adopters (when and where children
are given the chance to surf the Web).
Another interesting fact is that the six official languages of the United Nations
(Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish) are all included
in the above Top Ten Internet languages table.
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Internet ICT Telecommunications Reports
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Other Web Sites with Statistics and Information on Language
Sites in the Internet
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The Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium enables people around the world to use computers in any language.
List of Official Languages
Wikiverse list of the official languages of sovereign
countries.
La Francophonie
Find the French speaking states in the world.
Ethnologue
An encyclopedic reference work cataloging all
of the world’s 6,909 known living languages.
Modern Language Association
(USA)
The MLA Language Map and its Data Center provide information
about foreign languages studied in the United States and
related subjects.
Wikipedia - French Language Information
Selected French Language country directory and geographic
distribution information.
Wiktionary
The wikipedia dictionary, urban culture reference,
slang words and phrases listed in alphabetical order.
Urban Dictionary - American English
Searchable American slang dictionary, urban culture reference,
slang words and phrases listed in alphabetical order.
Internet Linguistic Diversity (pdf)
A UNESCO study, featuring Twelve Years of Measuring Linguistic Diversity in
the Internet.
A free 65 page pdf document.
World Linguistic Diversity (video)
Yann Martel speaks about languages, similarities and differences.
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Language Translation Tools
For those of you wishing to understand the meaning of web
sites of the Internet written in other languages, the following
free language translators will do the job:
Free Online Translation Tools
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More Language Translation
Tools
General Foreign Languages
Language-Learning Resources and useful links for many languages
are available here at the WWW Virtual Library.
One Look
Dictionary
A search engine for words and phrases: If you have a word for
which you'd like a definition or translation, OneLook will
quickly shuttle you to the web-based dictionaries that define or
translate that word. No word is too obscure: More than 6 million
words in more than 979 online dictionaries are indexed by the
OneLook® search engine.
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