Cyber-geography of languages

Abstract


 
 
 Part 1 of this study explains the methodology, sources, biases, and results of the recent study on the presence on the Internet of the 330 languages with more than one million L1 speakers, and the reality of the place of English on the Internet. This part analyzes the results in terms of cyber-geography for the other languages. It appears that the languages of Europe, especially English, are still dominating the Internet but that the languages of Asia and the Arabic world are in a strong progression and will take the lead, in terms of connected speakers. The languages of Africa are suffering from the difficulty of many African countries to overcome the digital divide: however, demographic long-term future clearly will favor in the long run African languages and the European languages with a notable presence in Africa (by order of importance: English, French and Portuguese).