The new infographic from the Visual Capitalist compares default website languages with real-world users.
Chinese language is spoken by over 14% of the world’s population – well over 1 billion people – but it’s not being reflected in the language of the web: only 1.4% of the top 10 million websites are displayed in Chinese.
The Visual Capitalist’s newest infographic is a part of the article written by Govind Bhutada, who discusses the most used languages of the internet.
The chart is based on a ranking of 20 most popular online languages, comparing the share of top 10 million websites with the share of speaking population.
As you could have predicted, English is the most commonly used online language. As many as 60% of websites use it – it’s over 6 million of the top 10 million websites taken into consideration.
The most interesting comparison is between the online language presence and real speakers. So, again:
- English is the No. 1 language, spoken by 16.2% of global population, but it’s the default language of the much higher share of websites – around 60.4%.
- Chinese is the second most popular language in the world (14.3%), but it’s used only in 1.4% websites. Simplified Chinese is on the 10th position of the ranking.
The second most popular online language is Russian, represented by 8.5% of the top 10 million websites. It’s the language spoken by only 3.3% of the world population. Such a huge online popularity is a result of the significant online presence of Runet, the internet’s Russian language community.
Although it’s likely that English and Russian will continue to dominate the web, Asian languages have the highest potential for growth in internet usage.
Click or tap the infographic to see it in full resolution. Makes sure to visit the original post to read all the details.
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