Will English soon die out as the most dominant language on the Internet and be replaced by Chinese language? According to data gathered by Today translations English still retains the number one spot among Internet users. However, China has the highest population of any single country in the world and Internet usage has seen a rapid growth in this country. With this in mind, English might be losing its ground. Spanish makes it into the top three and comes as second most popular language on Facebook. Still, when it comes to social media English language is most popular, and used by 52% of the internet population.
One of the positive effects of globalisation is that endangered languages (for example Oceanic language from Papua New Guinea has only 600 surviving speakers) are more likely to survive thanks to social media. As Richard Gray from The Sunday Telegraph argues, unique local languages are threatened by many factors including cultural changes and government repressions. Luckily, technology helps grow the audience via digital channels, including YouTube, Twitter and the above mentioned Facebook.
This article is a guest post by one of the most recognised translation service companies in London, Today Translations.