
Is Chinese The New Language Of The Internet? - WildUtah
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/is-chinese-the-new-language-of-the-internet/68475/
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uast23
Chinese can be the language of Internet within China, not outside and I am not
saying it with any agony; it is the truth. Once and for all English has been
established as the universal language to communicate.

India as an example, has majority of its websites targeted towards English
speaking audience (which is a huge lot in India) and its not because no body
wants to do a regional website, its because the regional websites have very
less number of readers. So, learning English is almost a pre-requisite to
using Internet here. And there is no hard feeling about having "English" as a
pre-requisite because that helps you in reaching to a wider audience.

Niche cannot be denied and we will always have regionally targeted products
but that won't replace English at a global level. Even China is training a
huge number of people with English.

~~~
cdavid
I am not sure why you are saying that english has been established once and
for all. French was that language two centuries and half ago because France
was very powerful, and latin was before because the church was the most
powerful entity (in Europe that is). It is mostly a question of which culture
is the dominant one - right now, it is the western one, in particular american
one. I don't know how nor when, but I am sure it will change at some point.
The cost of changing language is not that high.

The only thing that could change this would be near-perfect automated
translation. I would not bet on China not getting the most important culture
in the world before that :)

~~~
uast23
I said that because of increasing level of acceptance among people. And I beg
to differ on "The cost of changing language is not that high" point of yours.

I know that English was not always the first language to communicate for
everyone but look at 'today" where billions of people are reading and writing
English everyday on web at a faster pace than any other language. All the
dominant languages earlier did not have this privilege. And the bigger point
is that no body minds it. People are more concerned about the their economic
status. And this might be very personal but somehow I don't relate to
languages emotionally. I am very much an Indian at heart even though I use
English for most of my everyday communication needs :)

Regarding the cost for language change, it will take lot of economic turmoil
to turn it totally upside down.

~~~
zeemonkee
"Once and for all" is a very, very long time. English could easily fragment
(happened to Latin), or be supplanted.

For example, Persian occupied the same status that English does today in
India, and was replaced pretty quickly once the British took over.

~~~
uast23
I never said that English is/will be the only language having existence.
English is not the first language in India and with the kind of diversity
India has I am sure it never will be the first language. But it is the common
platform for people to communicate. Same is the case with other languages. We
are talking while living in a much broader perspective now, where people are
looking forward to work with each other and gain, rather than rule each other.
So, just because some event happened in past, its not necessary that it will
happen again.

And while I am at it, let me say that this human kindness has not evolved on
its own. We are living in a nuclear age, so for one person/country to dominate
others it it will take millions of life and an entire economic era to fall
down.

So from current standing of the world, thinking that there will be one major
global event which will suddenly change the way we live is a little imaginary,
unless we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.

China is one of the fastest growing economies and there is no denial to the
fact the Chinese language will spread once the trade has more open face but at
the same time no one else has stopped (US and other English speaking
countries). So languages might co-exist but replacing English is far from
truth.

I truly wish that more n more languages attain a global status. This will just
add to the learning.

~~~
zeemonkee
There need not be a major global event for English to lose its status. There
are a number of possible scenarios, which may take centuries or millennia. For
example, Latin persisted as the language of the church and academia centuries
after the collapse of the Roman Empire - if the US were to collapse tomorrow
(however unlikely) English will likely persist out of convenience for a while.

It need not even be a collapse - sometimes languages can be adopted for other
reasons. For example, upper class Romans spoke Greek (the language of a
conquered people), upper class Russians in the 19th century spoke French (if
you read War and Peace, it's strange to see so much French dialogue - when the
French were the enemy !). Could it be possible that perhaps a century hence,
upper class Americans use Chinese among themselves and English to speak to the
peasants ?

A more likely scenario is fragmentation into new languages - just as Latin
broke up into French, Spanish etc. Often this happens with the influence of
local languages. While a collapse in global communications - due to war,
resource depletion, or other disaster - would accelerate the process, it can
still happen over a longer period of time.

Another new possibility is that advances in technology render the concept of a
lingua franca obsolete - a "universal translator". This is unlikely without
some major advances in AI but not impossible.

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jerf
What is this "language of the internet" of which you speak? Some sort of
artificial human distinction laid down upon an incredibly complex landscape to
make you feel like you understand what's going on? I do not think there is any
such beast.

"The Internet" is ultimately still just the accumulation of many people
speaking together, and languages will be what they are. There won't be a
"lingua fraca" of the Internet because there doesn't need to be one.

~~~
bad_user
Every international website / service starts with English by default, then
gets extended to other languages.

But localization doesn't go very well, with the example I'm thinking about
being Wikipedia, where the English version is still the place to go when
searching for information.

~~~
WildUtah
I find better information in Spanish about Spanish-speaking places and
creative works and also about indigenous American cultures. Similarly with
Japanese.

But most of Wikipedia is best in English, sure. That might be just because
English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Other languages could
match English if they had as many speakers. There isn't any special value
inherent to the way Wikipedia works in English or a bias in the code toward
English articles.

~~~
bad_user
Yes, but that's what a lingua franca means: that secondary language you have
to know if you want to read stuff that hasn't been translated in your language
yet or speak with people that aren't speaking your language.

------
kulpreet
I've taken Mandarin in school for three years and I can tell you that
regardless of Chinese being the 'new language of the internet', Chinese
websites are like entering a whole new world. Everything from the design to
ads are completely different from what you'd expect on an English site.

~~~
Groxx
Japanese pages are similarly very different from English.

I suspect many languages have different "internets" though; there's a rather
strong language barrier that prevents a lot of their users from experiencing
other language's styles.

~~~
chunkbot
_"Similarly different?"_

~~~
Groxx
5-2 is the same difference as 9-6, so yeah.

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Anenome
Numbers alone does not create a "dominant language on the internet". Chinese
is far more difficult to learn than English. English is international, that's
not gonna change any time soon.

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InclinedPlane
A rather misleading infographic, seemingly intentionally so. Yes, internet
usage is growing amongst people who live in countries where English is not the
primary language. However, that's the extent of the analysis. In actuality
despite a lot of growth in non-English web content English is still the de
facto language of online communication.

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bad_user
What we see here is that more and more uneducated people gain Internet access,
so naturally the Internet is getting extended with localized content.

On the other hand in countries where English-learning is mandatory in school
(like most of Europe) people (especially teenagers) are using and reading
English websites without problems. English is already the default for the
European Union and comes first (on the Internet) before Spanish (second most
spoken language in the world, after Chinese), German or French.

One problem with Chinese that I can see is that it's a really hard to learn
language. I could learn English and Spanish without even trying, with my
native language being one of the Romance languages.

I also don't think the sheer number of Internet users counts so much. Buying
power counts for a lot more and while China is on the rise its citizens are
not the consumers you want (at least not yet).

~~~
jimmyjim
> [...] Spanish (second most spoken language in the world, after Chinese),
> German or French.

Spanish isn't the second most spoken language in the world.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_numb...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers)

~~~
sorbus
Spanish had the second largest number[1] of native and secondary speakers in
1999[2] (417 million) behind Mandarin with 1052 million. It's also still the
second most spoken language when counting only native speakers. However,
English is currently the second most spoken language, with 900 million native
and secondary speakers.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers)

[2] The numbers the parent points to are estimates from 1997.

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g0atbutt
Seeing how this was written in English, I'm going to say "no"…

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binbasti
I'm starting to think that when an article's title is phrased as a polar
question, you can be almost sure the rational answer is a simple "no" (in
spite of what the content may suggest).

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vorg
Would you rather have 1000 websites in a certain language, virtually all of
them unblocked, or 3000 sites in another certain language, 80% of them
unblocked?

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kiba
So we have this great cultural information separated merely by the great
barrier wall of language.

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yycom
That's one stupid infographic

