Only 4% of languages are used online
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Only 4% of languages are used online
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Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#2That statistic is somewhat misleading. Or, at least, not very meaningful. A more meaningful statistic would acknowledge the different "weights" that certain languages carry (i.e., "how many people use it").
Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#3We parsed a lot of the data from App reviews (about 100 million) in different countries. Languages used are predominantly skewered toward english or other european languages. For example, in Israel, 51% of all reviews are in english while only 46% are in Hebrew.
Writeup on major countries: http://blog.sensortower.com/blog/2013/11/27/what-apple-app-s...
Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#4I can't decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#5I don't think wikipedia is such a great way to decide on a language. A better way is things like chat messages, but they are harder to analyze.
Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#6I'd bet a large portion of these languages don't even have official written languages. Some of the Chinese languages have tens of millions of native speakers and even they have no standardized way of writing their languages. When you start getting into languages that are specific to a tribe or very local area, the odds seem pretty low.
Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#7I can't decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
That depends on whether you are globalist or nationalist.
Globalist - good, less languages - less barriers. Good for international commerce and knowledge sharing.
Nationalist - bad, loss of language means some part of cultural heritage lost.
Truth is always somewhere in between.
Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#8And what percentage of people in the world uses one of the languages in that 4% as their primary language? I'm guessing it's a really large percentage, probably a majority of the world's population. It's not really useful to look at the percent of languages when they vary in the number of speakers by so much (and there's a long tail of languages with a vanishingly small number of speakers).
Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#9I can't decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
That depends on whether you are globalist or nationalist. Globalist - good, less languages - less barriers. Good for international commerce and knowledge sharing. Nationalist - bad, loss of language means some part of cultural heritage lost. Truth is always somewhere in between.
Many regional languages and dialects have been lost due to the efforts of nationalists, not globalists. Nationalists favour the use of a single language for all citizens of a country.
Re: Only 4% of languages are used online
#10I can't decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
That depends on whether you are globalist or nationalist. Globalist - good, less languages - less barriers. Good for international commerce and knowledge sharing. Nationalist - bad, loss of language means some part of cultural heritage lost. Truth is always somewhere in between.
"Globalist - good, less languages - less barriers. Good for international commerce and knowledge sharing."
This is wrong, as there being more languages does not mean everyone is monolingual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
"Truth is always somewhere in between." What if I claim it isn't?