You'll Need to Learn Chinese to Read the Internet
Maybe Firefly got it right.
The dominant language of the internet up until this point is English. We're lucky that we understand a language that is used so widely on the largest communications platform in all of mankind, but soon we may have to learn another language if we want to keep up with the latest funny pictures of cats.
The Next Web has created an infographic based on information from Internet World Stats that show the staggering growth of Chinese usage on the internet. That's not surprising, given the population of China.
Last year, China gained 36 million new internet users, bringing the country's total up to 440 million. At this current rate, it won't be long until Chinese is the most popular language of the internet.
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HELL NO!
that would be a good motivation to pick up another language
The graphs don`t show something .. that only chinese ppl use it , on the other hand everything else uses english
I'll be the first to say that won't happen.
China has the world largest LAN. It's not internet.......
草泥马！
i take it there not enofe Chinese speaking English . maybe there changing to much to LEARN ENGLISH THERE! LEARN ENGLISH . or use a GOOGLE TRANSLATOR OR JUST USE CHROME PROBLEM FIXD . Chinese can kiss my ass they not gonna force people in to learning Chinese they need to learn english . i dont understand Chinese has more people they should have more information on web then we do.
*charging to much money*
or... use translate.google.com.
1 billion Chinese, 5 billion other people. English is the dominant world trade language and a lot easier to learn than a 2000 symbol alphabet.
translators
i take it there not enofe Chinese speaking English . maybe there changing to much to LEARN ENGLISH THERE! LEARN ENGLISH . or use a GOOGLE TRANSLATOR OR JUST USE CHROME PROBLEM FIXD . Chinese can kiss my ass they not gonna force people in to learning Chinese they need to learn english . i dont understand Chinese has more people they should have more information on web then we do.
Could you learn english too? lol. The US is one of the countries with this least amount of bilingual people. Sadly that includes me too.
You'll be pleased to know that people in asian program in English, and website coding is still in english.
"not enofe Chinese speaking English" - My guess is that there are not enough Americans speaking English either.
There are 1.4 billion Chinese, 1 billion of them can't afford the internet and I find it hard to believe that there is 400 million in china using it.
English speaking users - 536m @ 42% penetration 1.276b total
Chinese speaking users - 444m @ 32.6% penetration 1.361b total
Until penetration in China is just below that of english countries there won't be more chinese users. Additionaly I think 50% of the new chinese users are actually gold farmers for WOW, so they don't count.
Even chinese people prefer english for technical things once they learn it. It's pretty hard to write a paper about fiber optic data transmission theory in chinese and even harder to type it on a computer...and worst of all, you limit yourself to a smaller audience if you do.
i take it there not enofe Chinese speaking English . maybe there changing to much to LEARN ENGLISH THERE! LEARN ENGLISH . or use a GOOGLE TRANSLATOR OR JUST USE CHROME PROBLEM FIXD . Chinese can kiss my ass they not gonna force people in to learning Chinese they need to learn english . i dont understand Chinese has more people they should have more information on web then we do.
You don't speak English either.
1 billion Chinese, 5 billion other people. English is the dominant world trade language and a lot easier to learn than a 2000 symbol alphabet.
Agreed, this will never happen lol
Could you learn english too? lol. The US is one of the countries with this least amount of bilingual people. Sadly that includes me too. You'll be pleased to know that people in asian program in English, and website coding is still in english.
If someone is born with the most universal of all universal languages(english), there's not much incentive to learn another language. If, for instance, you were born with navajo, flemish, or slovakian, you would feel a stronger urge to learn another language.
If someone is born with the most universal of all universal languages(english), there's not much incentive to learn another language. If, for instance, you were born with navajo, flemish, or slovakian, you would feel a stronger urge to learn another language.
I totally agree that there is not nearly the same incentive. But when someone like robertking82881 says comments like that, I believe my response is legitimate. Especially when other people have a larger population than us, and we get so many products from other countries.
Plus it is good for everyone to know another language since it allows for different ways of thinking and cultural understanding. Although I am not one to talk since I am not fully bilingual in any of the 3 languages I studied. =P
Chinese is spoken by the Chinese, English is used pretty much by everyone else (for official purposes), including many Chinese. Yes, there are billions of Chinese, but the global market has, for the most part, settled on English. When my products start saying 中国制造 instead of "Made In China", then I'll start worrying.
Nice theory
. Fortunately, the colonial days are over. In USA we just benefit from the success of England, being former part of its colonial empire...
buncha americans too lazy to learn another language is what im reading. and throwing such a fit because it was suggested, xenophobes? firefly was a badass show btw. and latin is the universal language that spawned most of what europe speaks. english is one of the hardest languages to learn for anyone else. its a gross bastardization of german. learn one of the romance languages and youll probably be able to pick up the other ones pretty quickly.
I hate this globalist propaganda, the elites have for a long time built up China on the backs of it's people who work as slaves while destroying the futures of millions in Europe and America.
They are invisible in Facebook map.
yeah.. lemme take a stab at a number... 80%; the number of internet sites in chinese that have little to no relevance to a reader who speak primarily english, *boom* roasted.
I hate this globalist propaganda, the elites have for a long time built up China on the backs of it's people who work as slaves while destroying the futures of millions in Europe and America.
Gelnn Beck, is that you?
Gelnn Beck, is that you?
err, spelling fail....
Well, I don't see how this changes anything. The dominance of English hasn't exactly caused other world languages like Spanish, French or German to disappear from the world wide web.
There's plenty of room for everyone, so how is this news?
Of course, it's a good motivation to learn Chinese. I might learn it some day (I don't really get where Americans get this 'English is good enough for everyone'-attitude from, can't you see learning multiple languages is a good thing?)
The thing that irritates me most about china is I spent my time learning Japanese to do business in Asia and German for Europe. My German is still quite helpful but my Japanese isn't all that useful now so I guess I have to start working on learning Chinese.
Errr..I have to point out that India's internet presence is growing as well, and most of us use English online. So I think with that and with English being preferred by US, Canada, Europe, Australia, we certainly have a good chance to keep English dominant.
And even if Chinese still becomes dominant, it'll not mix with the mainstream internet. I mean, I never see a website in any other language on the net unless I specifically look for it. My language preferences take care of that. What will happen is that there will be lots of Chinese websites that are invisible to other users.
I'm all for this. I can only speak English, but if this means I will not have to contend with as many terribly spelled, horribly conjugated, and altogether embarrassing examples of 'English' that can be found on YouTube, various forums, or TomsHardware, then I for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords.