Languages on the Internet
Internet access
More 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 languages on the Internet
According to Internet World Stats, the top ten languages on the Internet, listed below, accounted for 81.8% of all Internet use in 2010. English was the dominant language, accounting for almost 30% of Internet users, with Chinese in second place.
| Language | Users in Millions |
| English | 536.6 |
| Chinese | 444.9 |
| Spanish | 153.3 |
| Japanese | 99.1 |
| Portuguese | 82.5 |
| German | 75.2 |
| Arabic | 65.4 |
| French | 59.8 |
| Russian | 59.7 |
| Korean | 39.4 |
| All the other languages | 350.6 |
Ah, but the Americans make one more division. They say, on their software systems and websites, that we in the UK speak BRITISH English! ENGLISH IS ENGLISH; there are no sub-classes of English. I would suggest that they really mean Americans speak AMERICAN ENGLISH; for example kilOMetres, with emphasis on the second syllable and not on the first syllable, as is correct. Just apply their corruption to centimetres, millimetres, etc and have a laugh.
That pie chart is totally wrong.