Merging Media and the Market

“Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about”

English, Chinese and Spanish are the top three languages used on the Internet.  Minorities are more inclined to utilize new media, possibly because new media enables easier access to variety of content that is easily translated of published in a person’s language of choice.   But to enable more people to have access to the Internet, it has been argued that a larger range of languages be supported via the Internet.

According to Internet World Stats the majority of Internet users use English (29.4%), followed by Chinese (18.9%) and Spanish (8.5%). After that the usage drops off with the tenth most used language, Italian, at just 2.4% of all Internet users. But ‘just 2.4% of Internet users still accounts for over thirty four million users. Consider the following chart of the top ten Internet languages and Internet usages statistics by language.  

“Internet for all” means going beyond those who speak English and should encompass content, hardware, software and internationalized domain names. Search engines, in particular, should support multiple languages as it is the way most people navigate the Internet. Google launched a Maori version of their search engine, a language spoken by just 150,000 or so people living mainly in New Zealand. Coinciding with Maori Language Week, Google Aotearoa caters specially to people who speak the language of New Zealand’s indigenous people.  Aotearoa is a Maori word often translated as Land of the Long White Cloud, and commonly used by North Island Maori as the word for New Zealand.

However, some doubt as to whether there is a high enough demand for using the Internet in local languages. For example, higher education in India is predominately in English and a language people are aspiring to.  But before millions of dollars in invested in integrating the content of the Internet across all languages, one must first consider illiteracy levels among speakers of these languages to insure that resources aren’t being wasted.  Take for example, Latin, which is said to be a dead language.  While there are a few people that can read Latin and even fewer people who can actually speak it: would it really be worth translating the Internet into this language.