View source for Languages used on the Internet

{{Short description|none}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}

Slightly over half of the homepages of the most visited websites on the [[World Wide Web]] are in English, with varying amounts of information available in many other languages.<ref name="w3techs historical trends"/><ref name="12years">{{cite journal | url=http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/twelve-years-of-measuring-linguistic-diversity-in-the-internet-balance-and-perspectives/ | title=Twelve years of measuring linguistic diversity in the Internet: balance and perspectives |last1=Pimienta|first1=Daniel|last2=Prado|first2=Daniel |last3=Blanco|first3=Álvaro | journal=United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization | year=2009 | access-date=24 March 2015 | archive-date=3 April 2015 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150403145133/http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/resources/publications-and-communication-materials/publications/full-list/twelve-years-of-measuring-linguistic-diversity-in-the-internet-balance-and-perspectives/ }}</ref> Other top languages are Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Persian, French, German and Japanese.<ref name="w3techs historical trends">{{Cite web|last=|first=|date=|title=Usage statistics of content languages for websites|url=https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language|url-status=live|archive-url=https://archive.today/20211112133335/https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language|archive-date=November 12, 2021|access-date=November 12, 2021|website=archive.fo}}</ref><ref>[https://www.languagelist.org/  Language Online]</ref>

Of the more than 7,000 existing languages, only a few hundred are recognized as being in use for Web pages on the World Wide Web.<ref name="towards">{{Cite web|url=https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/continents-most-indigenous-languages|title=What continents have the most indigenous languages?|date=3 May 2019|website=Ethnologue|access-date=27 December 2019|archive-date=27 December 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191227173843/https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/continents-most-indigenous-languages|url-status=live}}</ref>

==Languages used==
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.<ref name="12years" /> 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.<ref name="12years"/>

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.<ref>{{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}}</ref>

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]].<ref>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.</ref>

== Usage statistics of content languages for websites ==
W3Techs estimated percentages of the top 10 million websites on the World Wide Web using various content languages as of 18 March 2025:<ref name="w3techs historical trends"/>

{| class="wikitable sortable"
!Rank !!Language!!15 May 2023
!18 March 2025
|-
|1||[[English language|English]]||55.5%
|49.1%
|-
|2||[[Spanish language|Spanish]]||5.0%
|6.0%
|-
|3||[[German language|German]]||4.3%
|5.8%
|-
|4||[[Japanese language|Japanese]]||3.7%
|5.1%
|-
|5||[[French language|French]]||4.4%
|4.5%
|-
|6||[[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]||2.4%
|3.9%
|-
|7||[[Russian language|Russian]]||4.9%
|3.8%
|-
|8||[[Italian language|Italian]]||1.9%
|2.8%
|-
|9||[[Dutch language|Dutch]]||1.5%
|2.2%
|-
|10||[[Polish language|Polish]]||1.4%
|1.8%
|-
|11||[[Turkish language|Turkish]]||2.3%
|1.7%
|-
|12||[[Persian language|Persian]]||1.8%
|1.2%
|-
|13||[[Chinese language|Chinese]]||1.4%
|1.1%
|-
|14||[[Vietnamese language|Vietnamese]]||1.3%
|1.1%
|-
|15||[[Indonesian language|Indonesian]]||0.7%
|1.1%
|-
|16||[[Czech language|Czech]]||0.7%
|1.0%
|-
|17||[[Korean language|Korean]]||0.7%
|0.8%
|-
|18||[[Ukrainian language|Ukrainian]]||0.6%
|0.6%
|-
|19||[[Hungarian language|Hungarian]]||0.4%
|0.6%
|-
|20||[[Swedish language|Swedish]]||0.5%
|0.5%
|-
|21||[[Arabic]]||0.7%
|0.5%
|-
|22||[[Romanian language|Romanian]]||0.4%
|0.5%
|-
|23||[[Greek language|Greek]]||0.5%
|0.5%
|-
|24||[[Hebrew language|Hebrew]]||0.5%
|0.4%
|-
|25||[[Danish language|Danish]]||0.3%
|0.4%
|-
|26||[[Finnish language|Finnish]]||0.3%
|0.4%
|-
|27||[[Slovak language|Slovak]]||0.3%
|0.4%
|-
|28||[[Thai language|Thai]]||0.4%
|0.3%
|-
|29||[[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]]||0.2%
|0.3%
|-
|30||[[Serbian language|Serbian]]||0.3%
|0.2%
|-
|31||[[Croatian language|Croatian]]||0.2%
|0.2%
|-
|32||[[Lithuanian language|Lithuanian]]||0.1%
|0.2%
|-
|33||[[Bokmål|Norwegian]] 
[[Bokmål]]
|0.1%
|0.2%
|-
|34||[[Slovene language|Slovenian]]||0.1%
|0.1%
|-
|35||[[Catalan language|Catalan]]||0.1%
|0.1%
|-
|36||[[Estonian language|Estonian]]||0.1%
|0.1%
|-
|37||[[Norwegian language|Norwegian]]||0.1%
|0.1%
|-
|38||[[Latvian language|Latvian]]||0.1%
|0.1%
|}

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 Internet|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).<ref name="W3TechsDetails">{{cite web | url=http://w3techs.com/technologies | title=Technologies Overview | publisher=W3Techs | access-date=24 March 2015}}</ref> As a consequence, the figures show a significantly higher percentage for many languages (especially for English) as compared to the figures for all websites.<ref name="Alternative">[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</ref> For all websites, estimates are between 20 and 50% for English.<ref>{{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}}</ref><ref name="12years" /><ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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 }}</ref>

== Most used scripts on the Internet ==
{| class="wikitable sortable"
!# !!Script !!%
|-
|1||[[Latin Script|Latin]]||85.2%
|-
|2||[[Hiragana]]||5.1%
|-
|3||[[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]]||4.8%
|-
|4||[[Arabic alphabet|Arabic]]||1.7%
|-
|5||[[Hanzi]]||1.2%
|-
|6||[[Hangul]]||0.8%
|-
|7||[[Greek alphabet|Greek]]||0.5%
|-
|8||[[Hebrew alphabet|Hebrew]]||0.4%
|-
|9||[[Thai script|Thai]]||0.3%
|}

==Content languages on YouTube==

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%,<ref>{{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/}}</ref> although other sources point to different percentages.<ref>{{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}}</ref>{{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.<ref name=GMIytstats>{{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}}</ref> 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.<ref name=PEW2019EnglishOnYT>{{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/}}</ref>

==Internet users by language==
InternetWorldStats estimates of the number of Internet users by language as of March 31, 2020:<ref>{{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 }}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref><ref>{{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}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Rank
! Language
! Internet<br />users
! Percentage
|-
| align=center | 1
| [[English language|English]]
|align=right | 1,186,451,052
|align=center | 25.9%
|-
| align=center | 2
| [[Chinese language|Chinese]]
|align=right | 888,453,068
|align=center | 19.4%
|-
| align=center | 3
| [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
|align=right | 363,684,593
|align=center | &nbsp;&nbsp;7.9%
|-
| align="center" | 4
| [[Arabic language|Arabic]]
| align="right" | 237,418,349
| align="center" | &nbsp;&nbsp;5.2%
|-
| align="center" | 5
|[[Indonesian language|Indonesian]]
| align="right" | 198,029,815
| align="center" | &nbsp;&nbsp;4.3%
|-
| align="center" | 6
| [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]
| align="right" | 171,750,818
| align="center" | &nbsp;&nbsp;3.7%
|-
| align="center" | 7
| [[French language|French]]
| align="right" | 144,695,288
| align="center" | &nbsp;&nbsp;3.3%
|-
| align=center | 8
| [[Japanese language|Japanese]]
| align=right | 118,626,672
| align=center | &nbsp;&nbsp;2.6%
|-
| align=center | 9
| [[Russian language|Russian]]
|align=right | 116,353,942
|align=center | &nbsp;&nbsp;2.5%
|-
| align=center | 10
| [[German language|German]]
| align=right | 92,525,427
| align=center | &nbsp;&nbsp;2.0%
|-
| align=center | 1–10
| Top 10 languages
| align=right | 3,525,027,347
| align=center | &nbsp;&nbsp;76.9%
|-
| align=center |  –
| Others
| align=right | 1,060,551,371
| align="center" | &nbsp;23.1%
|-
| align=center | '''Total'''
|
| align=right | 4,585,578,718
| align=center | 100%
|}

== Wikipedia page views by language ==
[[File:Most popular edition of Wikipedia by country.svg|thumb|right|Most popular edition of Wikipedia by country as of Dec 2022. In greyed-out countries, the "[[National language|national-language]]" edition is usually the most popular, but there are exceptions.]]
[[File:Most visited Wikipedias by language in proportion of monthly page visits.png|thumb|Most viewed editions of Wikipedia over time. The ranking reflects the most recent month in the data (Sep 2024).  ]]
[[File:Most edited Wikipedias by language in proportion of monthly edits.png|thumb|Most edited editions of Wikipedia over time. The ranking reflects the most recent month in the data (Sep 2024). ]]
The [[wmdoc:generated-data-platform/aqs/analytics-api/|Wikimedia Analytics API]] provides the most recent data on page views and page edits, among other statistics, for all language editions of Wikipedia.

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Rank
! Language of Wikipedia edition
! Average daily page views by humans<br>(from 10/8/2023 to 10/8/2024)
|-
| 1
| [[English language|English]]
| 253,610,218
|-
| 2
| [[Japanese language|Japanese]]
| 29,741,657
|-
| 3
| [[Russian language|Russian]]
| 29,008,708
|-
| 4
| [[Spanish language|Spanish]]
| 27,436,473
|-
| 5
| [[German language|German]]
| 26,790,751
|-
| 6
| [[French language|French]]
| 22,913,851
|-
| 7
| [[Italian language|Italian]]
| 15,306,223
|-
| 8
| [[Chinese language|Chinese]]
| 14,975,873
|-
| 9
| [[Persian language|Persian]]
| 8,148,931
|-
| 10
| [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]
| 7,813,004
|-
| 11
| [[Polish language|Polish]]
| 7,151,202
|-
| 12
| [[Arabic]]
| 7,135,389
|-
| 13
| [[Turkish language|Turkish]]
| 4,825,138
|-
| 14
| [[Indonesian language|Indonesian]]
| 3,976,393
|-
| 15
| [[Dutch language|Dutch]]
| 3,934,187
|}

==See also==
{{Portal|Linguistics|Internet}}
<!-- alphabetical order please [[WP:SEEALSO]] -->
<!-- please add a short description [[WP:SEEALSO]], via {{subst:AnnotatedListOfLinks}} or {{Annotated link}} -->
{{div col|colwidth=20em|small=yes}}
* {{Annotated link |Computer technology for developing areas}}
* {{Annotated link |English in computing}}
* {{Annotated link |Global digital divide}}
* {{Annotated link |Great Firewall}}
* {{Annotated link |Internationalization and localization}}
** {{Annotated link |Language localisation}}
** {{Annotated link |Website localization}}
* {{Annotated link |Internet in China}}
* {{Annotated link |Internet in Russia}}
* {{Annotated link |Internet censorship and surveillance by country}}
* {{Annotated link |List of countries by number of broadband Internet subscriptions}}
* {{Annotated link |List of countries by number of Internet hosts}}
* {{Annotated link |List of countries by number of Internet users}}
* {{Annotated link |Multilingualism}}
* {{Annotated link |Rural internet}}
* {{Annotated link |Unicode}}
{{div col end}}
<!-- alphabetical order please [[WP:SEEALSO]] -->

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

==External links==
*[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.&nbsp;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]

{{Africa topic|Internet in}}
{{Americas topic|Internet in}}
{{Asia topic|Internet in}}
{{Europe topic|Internet in}}
{{Oceania topic|Internet in}}
{{Portal bar|Language|Internet}}

[[Category:Internet-related lists]]
[[Category:Internet culture]]
[[Category:Population statistics]]
[[Category:Natural language and computing|Internet]]