Report: Online English will fall to Chinese within five years

by Steven Mostyn - Dec 30 2010, 09:01

As things stand, international English is the dominant standard and business language used across the Internet. However, a language chart offered up by Next Web suggests that, as the Net continues to grow, Chinese will usurp English and assume the online throne.

Moreover, the technology blog has revealed that China presently boasts a rapidly expanding online population of 445 million and is quickly closing in on the Net’s community of 537 million English speakers.

According to figures sourced from Internet World Stats, China has added 36 million online users in the last 12 months alone and English could lose its online dominance within five years if the Chinese language maintains its current momentum.

However, not everyone is convinced regarding the imminent demise of English as the Net’s leading language.

“Chinese will never replace English as the ‘official’ language of the Internet,” said Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land in a FOX News report. “This is clearly based on raw numbers and the size of China’s Internet population.”

There’s a significant drop-off in language spread beyond English and Chinese, with Spanish speakers making up 153 million of the Net’s population of 1.96 billion, while the Japanese and Portuguese round out the top five with 99 million and 83 million users respectively.

Around the Web