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Global internet usage



 
 
This article provides information relating to the number of people who use the Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
 by language, nationality, geography, etc. f July 2008, approximately 1,463,632,361 people worldwide use the Internet, according to .

most-used language on the Internet is English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
.






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This article provides information relating to the number of people who use the Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
 by language, nationality, geography, etc.
Internet Users By Country World Map

Total number of Internet users

As of July 2008, approximately 1,463,632,361 people worldwide use the Internet, according to .

Languages used on the Internet

The most-used language on the Internet is English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
. Although the total number of native English speakers in the world is about 322 million, English is spoken as a second language by up to 1.2 billion people around the world. They make their contributions to the Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
 in their own language as well as in English.

Chinese
Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
 is the most common native language on Earth, and the second most-used language on the Internet. According to CNNIC, the number of Chinese Internet users increased by 42% in 2008 to a total of 298 million. This high rate of growth is expected to have a significant impact on the Internet in the near future.

Notably absent from the table below is Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
. This is due to the high numbers of English educated Indians. Virtually all Indian colleges and universities teach in English. English, along with Hindi, are the two official languages of India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
. The Indian population online is also increasing rapidly.

The source of the figures in the table below is Global Reach. These are estimates of the world online population by language for September 2004.

Position Language Users (m) Users Total Population (m) GDP (b) World Economy GDP Per Capita
1 English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
295.4 35.2% 508   
2 Chinese
Chinese language

Chinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of language mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan languages of languages....
110.0 13.7% 874 $6,328 13% $7,200
3 Spanish
Spanish language

Spanish or Castilian is a Romance languages that originated in northern Spain, and gradually spread in the Kingdom of Castile and evolved into the principal language of government and trade....
86.0 12% 410 $2,500 8.9% $7,100
4 Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
67.1 8.4% 125 $3,400 8% $27,200
5 German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
55.3 6.9% 101 $2,679 5.8% $26,800
6 French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
33.9 4.2% 100 $1,517 4.2% $19,700
7 Korean
Korean language

Korean is the official language of North Korea and South Korea. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China....
31.3 3.9% 78 $887 2% $11,400
8 Italian
Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
30.4 3.3% 62 $1,251 3.6% $20,100
9 Portuguese
Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia and Portugal. It is derived from the Latin language spoken by the Romanization Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula around 2000 years ago....
29.4 3.3% 176 $1,487 3.6% $8,400
10 Russian
Russian language

Russian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe....
22 2.7% 167 $822 1.8% $4,900
11 Malay
Malay language

The Malay language is an Austronesian languages spoken by the Malays and people of other ethnic groups who reside in Peninsular Malaysia, southern Thailand, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau Islands and parts of the coast of Borneo....
14.2 1.8% 229 $258 2% 
12 Dutch
Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic languages spoken by over 22 million people as a first language, and about 5 million people as a second language."1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language speakers of Dutch is very small. Most native...
14.0 1.7% 20 $575  $28,500
13 Arabic
Arabic language

Arabic is a Central Semitic language, thus related to and classified alongside other Semitic languages languages such as Hebrew language and Aramaic language....
13.5 1.7% 300 $678 1.6% $4,200
14 Polish
Polish language

Polish , an official language of Poland, has the largest number of speakers of any West Slavic languages. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland, and it has a regular orthography....
9.6 1.2% 44 $359  $8,100
15 Swedish
Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic languages language, spoken by around 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the ?land islands....
7.7  9 $237  $26,300
16 Thai
Thai language

Thai , is the national language and official language language of Thailand and the mother tongue of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group....
4.9  46 $406  $8,800
17 Turkish
Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
6.8  67.4 $431  $6,400
18 Vietnamese
Vietnamese language

Vietnamese , formerly known under French colonization as Annamese , is the national language and official language language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of the Vietnamese people , who constitute 86% of Demographics of Vietnam, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese, most of whom live in the United States....
5.8  84   
19 Persian
Persian language

name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=[f??r'si]|image=|caption=Farsi in Perso-Arabic script |states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Bahrain....
4.6  71 $84  
20 Romanian
Romanian language

Romanian or Daco-Romanian ; self-designation: limba rom?na, ) is a Romance languages spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova....
4.4  26 $108  $4,200
21 Czech
Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czech people worldwide....
3.8  12 $121  $10,000
22 Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
3.8  5.2 $132  $21,000
23 Danish
Danish language

Danish is one of the North Germanic languages , a sub-group of the Germanic languages branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany where it holds the status of minority language....
2.9  5.4 $171  $31,700
24 Finnish
Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by Finnish people outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden....
2.8  6 $142  $23,600
25 Hungarian
Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic languages unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries....
2.5  10 $96  $9,600
26 Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
2.4  12 $189  $15,800
27 Catalan
Catalan language

Catalan is a Romance languages, the national language and official language of Andorra, and a official language in the Autonomous Communities of Spain of the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencian Community and in the city of Alghero in the Italy List of islands in the Mediterranean of Sardinia....
2.4  6.6   
28 Norwegian
Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic languages language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. It is also spoken as a second language among Norwegian-Americans in the United States of America, especially in the central northern states....
2.1  5 $136  $27,200
29 Slovak
Slovak language

The Slovak language , sometimes incorrectly called ?Slovakian?, is an Indo-European languages that belongs to the West Slavic languages .The Czech and Slovak languages are Mutual intelligibility which means that even after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia Czech may be used in all official proceedings and documents in Slovakia, and vice ver...
1.8  5.6 $47  $8,700
30 Serbo-Croatian 1.0  20   
31 Ukrainian
Ukrainian language

Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic languages of the Slavic languages. It is the official language of Ukraine. In some areas of Russia there are dialects, Balachka or Surzhyk, which are the Ukrainianized versions of the Russian language....
0.9  47 $115  $2,300
32 Punjabi
Punjabi language

'Punjabi' , , is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region and their diasporas. Speakers include adherents of the religions of Islam, Sikhism and Hinduism....
0.8  38   
33 Slovenian
Slovenian language

Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic languages spoken by approximately 2.4 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia....
0.8  2 $22.90  $10,900
34 Icelandic
Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic languages, the language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese language and Norwegian dialects such as Telemark dialect and Sognam?l....
0.2  0.3 $6  $23,500
  World Total 801.4  6460 $41,400  


As of 2008 by Internet World Stats

Position Language Users (m) Total Population (m) GDP (b) % all Internet users Internet penetration by language Language growth (2000-2008)%
1 English 430.8 2039 $14129 29.4 21.1 203.5
2 Chinese 276.2 1365 $1127 18.9 20.2 755.1
3 Spanish 124.7 451.9 $3198 8.5 27.6 405.3
4 Japanese 94 127.3 $4326 6.4 73.8 99.7
5 French 68.2 410.5 $2223 4.7 16.6 458.7
6 German 61.2 96.4 $2850 4.2 63.5 121.0
7 Arabic 59.9 357.2 $694 4.1 16.8 2063.7
8 Portuguese 58.2 239.6 $666 4.0 24.3 668.0
9 Korean 34.8 72.7 $605 2.4 47.9 82.9
10 Italian 34.7 58.2 $1490 2.4 59.7 162.9


See also

  • English in computer science
  • Global digital divide
    Global digital divide

    The global digital divide is a term used to describe ?great disparities in opportunity to access the Internet and the information and educational/business opportunities tied to this access ? between developed and developing countries?....
  • Rural Internet
    Rural Internet

    Rural Internet is the access to the Internet from rural areas , which are settled places outside towns and cities. Inhabitants live in villages, Hamlet s, on farms and in other isolated houses....


External links

  • , web pages, 32 Latin character languages
  • [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ CIA - The World Factbook]