TOP TEN LANGUAGES
IN THE INTERNET

Growth
in Internet
(2000 - 2011)

World Population
for this Language
(2011 Estimate)

English

565,004,126

43.4 %

301.4 %

26.8 %

1,302,275,670

Chinese

509,965,013

37.2 %

1,478.7 %

24.2 %

1,372,226,042

Spanish

164,968,742

39.0 %

807.4 %

7.8 %

423,085,806

Japanese

99,182,000

78.4 %

110.7 %

4.7 %

126,475,664

Portuguese

82,586,600

32.5 %

990.1 %

3.9 %

253,947,594

German

75,422,674

79.5 %

174.1 %

3.6 %

94,842,656

Arabic

65,365,400

18.8 %

2,501.2 %

3.3 %

347,002,991

French

59,779,525

17.2 %

398.2 %

3.0 %

347,932,305

Russian

59,700,000

42.8 %

1,825.8 %

3.0 %

139,390,205

Korean

39,440,000

55.2 %

107.1 %

2.0 %

71,393,343

TOP 10 LANGUAGES

1,615,957,333

36.4 %

421.2 %

82.2 %

4,442,056,069

Rest of the Languages

350,557,483

14.6 %

588.5 %

17.8 %

2,403,553,891

WORLD TOTAL

2,099,926,965

30.3 %

481.7 %

100.0 %

6,930,055,154

NOTES: (1) Top Ten Languages Internet Stats were updated for May 31 2011. (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 from the U.S. Census Bureau . (5) For definitions and navigation help in several languages, see the Site Surfing Guide. (6) Stats may be cited, stating the source and establishing an active link back to Internet World Stats. Copyright © 2012, Miniwatts Marketing Group. All rights reserved worldwide.

Examples for interpretation of the data:
- There are 99,182,000 Japanese speaking people using the Internet, this represents 4.7 % of all the Internet users in the world.
- Out of the estimated 126,475,664 population of the world that speaks Japanese, 78.4 % use the Internet.
- The number of Japanese Speaking Internet Users has grown 110.7 % in the last eleven years (2000-2011).

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, 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 they are given the chance to surf).

Other Web Sites with Statistics and Information on Language Sites in the Internet

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 more than 47,000,000 people in the United States who speak languages other than English at home.

Verbivore - English Language Links
Selected English Language directory by Richard Lederer. Links to grammar, etymology, linguistics et al.

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.

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

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.

Internet Market Reports
Coming soon, a large selection of Internet Market Research, featuring the latest information about Internet usage statistics, global markets, world population, emerging international e-markets, top languages in Internet, and Internet stats by geographical regions. Based on the exclusive Internet World Stats archives (1998 - 2012). An exclusive membership site. Request information from:
the "editor" "at" "internetworldstats.com"