languages used on the Internet

There is debate over the most-used languages on the Internet. A 2009 UNESCO report monitoring the languages of websites for 12 years, from 1996 to 2008, found a steady year-on-year decline in the percentage of webpages in English, from 75 percent in 1998 to 45 percent in 2005. The authors found that English remained at 45 percent of content for 2005 to the end of the study but believe this was due to the bias of search engines indexing more English-language content rather than a true stabilization of the percentage of content in English on the World Wide Web.

The number of non-English web pages is rapidly expanding. The use of English online increased by around 281 percent from 2001 to 2011, a lower rate of growth than that of Spanish (743 percent), Chinese (1,277 percent), Russian (1,826 percent) or Arabic (2,501 percent) over the same period.{{cite web|last=Rotaru|first=Alexandru|url=http://www.scottmclay.co.uk/foreign-language-internet-good-business/|title=The foreign language Internet is good for business |access-date=21 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130407032518/http://www.scottmclay.co.uk/foreign-language-internet-good-business|archive-date=2013-04-07}}

According to a 2000 study, the international auxiliary language Esperanto ranked 40 out of all languages in search engine queries, also ranking 27 out of all languages that rely on the Latin script.Grefenstette, Gregory; Nioche, Julien. "[https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0006032 Estimation of English and non-English Language Use on the WWW] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180410143656/https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0006032 |date=10 April 2018 }}". Proceedings of RIAO'2000, "Content-Based Multimedia Information Access", Paris, April 12–14, 2000, pp. 237-246.

W3Techs estimated percentages of the top 10 million websites on the World Wide Web using various content languages as of 18 March 2025:

All other languages are used in less than 0.1% of websites. Even including all languages, percentages may not sum to 100% because some websites contain multiple content languages.

The figures from the W3Techs study are based on the one million most visited websites (i.e., approximately 0.27 percent of all websites according to December 2011 figures) as ranked by Alexa.com, and language is identified using only the home page of the sites in most cases (e.g., all of Wikipedia is based on the language detection of http://www.wikipedia.org).{{cite web | url=http://w3techs.com/technologies | title=Technologies Overview | publisher=W3Techs | access-date=24 March 2015}} As a consequence, the figures show a significantly higher percentage for many languages (especially for English) as compared to the figures for all websites.[http://funredes.org/lc2017/ An alternative approach to produce indicators of languages in the Internet] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170831225536/http://funredes.org/lc2017/ |date=31 August 2017 }} Pimienta, Daniel, June 2017 For all websites, estimates are between 20 and 50% for English.{{Cite book |last1=Vannini |first1=Laurent |title=Net.lang: réussir le cyberespace multilingue |last2=Le Crosnier |first2=Hervé |date=March 2012 |chapter=NET.LANG: Towards a multilingual cyberspace|chapter-url=http://net-lang.net/lang_en|publisher=C&F éd |via=Maaya Network |isbn=978-2-915825-08-4 |location=Caen|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304102504/http://net-lang.net/lang_en|archive-date=2016-03-04}}{{Cite journal |last=Pimienta |first=Daniel |date=2022 |title=Resource: Indicators on the Presence of Languages in Internet |url=https://aclanthology.org/2022.sigul-1.11 |journal=Proceedings of the 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages |location=Marseille, France |publisher=European Language Resources Association |pages=83–91}}{{Cite journal |last1=Pimienta |first1=Daniel |last2=Blanco |first2=Álvaro |last3=de Oliveira |first3=Gilvan Müller |date=2023 |title=The method behind the unprecedented production of indicators of the presence of languages in the Internet |journal=Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics |volume=8 |doi=10.3389/frma.2023.1149347 |issn=2504-0537 |pmc=10233101 |pmid=37273659 |doi-access=free }}

Of the top 250 YouTube channels, 66% of the content is in English, 15% in Spanish, 7% in Portuguese, 5% in Hindi, and 2% in Korean, while other languages make up 5%,{{cite web|title=6 Common Features Of Top 250 YouTube Channels|last=Yang|first=Brian|work=Twinword, Inc|year=2019|access-date=19 September 2021|url=https://www.twinword.com/blog/features-of-top-250-youtube-channels/}} although other sources point to different percentages.{{Cite web |last=Expert |first=Alan Spicer-YouTube Certified |date=2020-11-24 |title=Top Languages on YouTube [All The Stats!] [Dominate YouTube with Multiple Languages] |url=https://alanspicer.com/top-languages-on-youtube/ |access-date=2023-04-09 |website=Alan Spicer - YouTube Certified Expert |language=en-GB}}{{Better source needed|reason=Source is a blog|date=May 2022}} YouTube is available in over 80 languages with more than a hundred different local versions.{{cite web|title=YouTube User Statistics 2022|author=GMI Blogger|work=Global Media Insight - Dubai Digital Interactive Agency|date=18 April 2022|access-date=2 May 2022|url=https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/youtube-users-statistics/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220427080801/https://www.globalmediainsight.com/blog/youtube-users-statistics/|archive-date=27 April 2022}} Of those popular YouTube channels that posted a video in the first week of 2019, just over half contained some content in a language other than English.{{cite web|title=Popular YouTube channels produced a vast amount of content, much of it in languages other than English|last1=van Kessel|first1=Patrick|last2=Toor|first2=Skye|last3=Smith|first3=Aaron|work=Pew Research Center|date=25 July 2019|access-date=2 May 2022|url=https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/07/25/popular-youtube-channels-produced-a-vast-amount-of-content-much-of-it-in-languages-other-than-english/}}

InternetWorldStats estimates of the number of Internet users by language as of March 31, 2020:{{Cite web |date=2019-09-07 |title=Top Ten Internet Languages in The World - Internet Statistics |url=https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm |access-date=2024-07-04 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190907141114/https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm |archive-date=7 September 2019 }}{{Cite web |title=Internet: most common languages online by users 2017 |url=https://www.statista.com/statistics/737404/users-of-the-most-common-languages-online/ |access-date=2024-07-04 |website=Statista |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Schäferhoff |first=Nick |date=2023-07-24 |title=Most Used Languages on the Internet (Which to Add to Your Site?) |url=https://translatepress.com/most-used-languages-on-the-internet/ |access-date=2024-07-04 |website=TranslatePress |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=Berta |first=Natalie |date=2022-05-23 |title=What Are the Most Used Languages on the Internet & Why? |url=http://www.mosalingua.com/en/most-used-languages-on-the-internet/ |access-date=2024-07-04 |website=MosaLingua |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=Admin |date=2022-05-26 |title=Top 10 Languages Used On the Internet And Why? |url=https://www.tridindia.com/blog/top-10-languages-used-on-the-internet/ |access-date=2024-07-04 |website=Tridindia |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |title=10 Most Common Languages Used On The Internet For 2024 |url=https://www.marstranslation.com/blog/10-most-common-languages-used-on-the-internet |access-date=2024-07-04 |website=www.marstranslation.com |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=Langues dans Internet |url=https://www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca/Langues/2vital_expansionINTERNET.htm |access-date=2024-07-04 |website=www.axl.cefan.ulaval.ca}}{{Cite web |title=11 Most Common Languages Used on the Internet 2025 |url=https://www.ccjk.com/most-common-languages-used-on-the-internet/ |access-date=2025-02-18 |website=www.ccjk.com |date=17 February 2023 |language=en}}

File:Most popular edition of Wikipedia by country.svg" edition is usually the most popular, but there are exceptions.]]

File:Most visited Wikipedias by language in proportion of monthly page visits.png

File:Most edited Wikipedias by language in proportion of monthly edits.png

The Wikimedia Analytics API provides the most recent data on page views and page edits, among other statistics, for all language editions of Wikipedia.

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{{reflist}}

[https://www.crystalhues.com/blog/three-stages-of-the-translation-process What are the three stages of translation Process ?]

• [http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm Internet World Users by Language], Internet World Stats.
• [https://arxiv.org/abs/cs.cl/0006032 "Estimation of English and non-English Language Use on the WWW"], Gregory Grefenstette and Julien Nioche, in Proceedings of RIAO'2000, Content-Based Multimedia Information Access, Paris, 12–14 April 2000, pp. 237–246.
• [http://unicode.org/notes/tn13/ World GDP by Language 1975–2002], Mark Davis, Unicode Technical Note #13 (2003).
• [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/technology/internet/31hindi.html?partner=rss&emc=rss "Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages"], Daniel Sorid, New York Times, 30 December 2008.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20130914114257/http://www.nanjingmarketinggroup.com/knowledge/23rd-report-internet-development-in-China Statistical Survey Report on Internet Usage in China], China Internet Network Information Center (2009), English translation.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20120218122138/http://www.cnnic.cn/en/index/0O/02/index.htm List of CNNIC statistical reports], China Internet Network Information Center (1997-2010).
• [http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/news-and-in-focus-articles/in-focus-articles/2006/measuring-linguistic-diversity-on-the-internet/ Measuring Linguistic Diversity on the Internet], UNESCO (2006).
• [http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001870/187016e.pdf Twelve years of measuring linguistic diversity in the Internet], UNESCO (2009).
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20130820111814/http://gii2.nagaokaut.ac.jp/gii/blog/lopdiary.php Language Observatory], Japan Science and Technology Agency (2012).
• [https://obdilci.org Observatory of linguistic and cultural diversity on the Internet]

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