> Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 14:16:49 -0300
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: "INTERNET WORLD USERS BY LANGUAGE"
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Thankyou, Mamadou!
>
> Despite the effort, the information is not very useful:
> * Uneven criteria for calculating number of speakers. E.g. while the number of
> Spanish speakers has been calculated on the basis of the population of the
> the countries where Spanish is the official language, the number of English
> speakers has been calculated on other (unknown) basis.
> * That leads to a gross understatement of the number of Spanish speakers
> (perhaps others too, but I have no reliable figures), by excluding
> e.g. the 40+
> million people in the US that have Spanish as their mother tongue.[1]
> * But even if those figures were correct (or based on the same assumptions),
> they are of little use. When trying to analyze linguistic diversity
> in the Internet,
> we should take into account two factors:
> (a) The number of people proficient enough in a language to clearly understand
> contents written in that language, and
> (b) The volume of contents available for each language.
> * There is another, seemingly unsurmountable problem: while Internet penetration
> rates are calculated on country basis, such distribution is often
> uneven across
> language borders. E.g., Internet access for primarily Quechua-speaking
> communities in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, where Spanish is the
> majority language, is well below the related national averages.[2]
>
> Regards,
>
> Enrique
>
> [1] The total number of people having Spanish as their first language or usual
> communication language beyond their family/community group could be
> estimated around 487 million, give or take 1 %.
>
> [2] And I won't even tuch the issue of contents, which are less than minimal
> for a language spoken by about 9 million people.