In the beginning, the language of the World Wide Web was English. Times change though, and the United States’ military’s gift to civilization knows no national boundaries, and growing worldwide adoption of the internet has changed the audience make-up to such an extent that the dominant language of the internet is about to become Chinese. That’s not to say the Chinese are all that comfortable with this either. There has just been an official decree requiring the use of Chinese translations for all English words and phrases in newspapers, magazines and web sites. While all countries have watched the unregulated global nature of the internet erode traditional cultural values and the integrity of national languages, it seems the Chinese powers-that-be have concluded that the purity of the Chinese language needs to be preserved.
Firstly, let’s start with the infographic put together by Nextweb. It is a terrific infographic, though I have my doubts about the veracity of the numbers behind it as there’s no good reason China should have slowed its internet growth to the degree indicated in the chart. My bet is that the number of Chinese internet users is far closer to the number of English internet users already, and like every measure of China's emergence as the dominant country in the world, everyone has underestimated the growth.
The official Chinese Government edict to protect the Chinese language is an interesting one. The General Administration of Press and Publication web site announced last week that the mixing of foreign words in Chinese language publications without an accompanying Chinese language translation has been banned. The ban is all encompassing and includes the names of people and places, acronyms, abbreviations and common phrases, all of which have become increasingly common over recent years.
I don\'t doubt their web presence/use is growing - but just because they\'ve got a lot of people, don\'t assume they\'re all in their comfy carpeted loungerooms with a new iMac on their laps in front of the telly !!
Brett Himeda,
You\'re mistaken. Differences in dialects are only in spoken ones. The characters remain the same. There are two main varieties, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. The latter dominates in China, as it is sanctioned by the government as the official written language.
@Christopher - you\'re right. Not all Chinese people can afford a computer.
Besides, as a Chinese myself living in Hong Kong. I would prefer English websites than Chinese ones. So the infograph doesn\'t account for language preference ...
I say it is a bunch of nonsense. In 5 years, it\'ll still be English.
I have nothing against the various dialects the Chinese speak. Its just simple. The internet like the world is ruled by money and porn. Simply put, as rich as china is as a country, its people are dirt poor. When the Chinese do business on the web they are more then happy to speak English. I don\'t really see porn having much influence on language.
the sad truth is the Chinese and similar languages are just not compatible with the web and the future of technology as a whole. Its a sad truth but smart phones, voice recognition and most every important technology is based around a phonetic language. More and more the world is accepting English as the primary language. I personally hate the English language. It is simply lacking in logic and beauty.
SO if there is a rise in Chinese webpages and the traffic to those sites increase that means more Chinese are getting on the web. As that happens more of them will see the importance of the English language and learn it. It may take a couple generations but it will happen. Just like the children of immigrants tend to be far more fluent then their parents. Its the same thing as the web. The first generation on there will go to Chinese speaking sites, the successors will tend towards English speaking sites. In a few generations there may be people speaking various Chinese but the characters of those languages will be rare. Simply put they are just late to the game.
One last thing.. who the hell is NextWeb and why on earth should any one care what they think?????
That\'s a strange comment as you seem to be one of the better-spoken people among average internet commenters.
The beauty of the English language is it\'s flexibility, which leads to a level of nuance and expressiveness not easily reached in the languages that hold to a strict and rigid structure. English does have fundamental logic, and you can reproduce every structured sentence as found in \"protected\" French, Chinese, etc., without deviation. You could speak like that all the time if you wished. You would sound like a robot if you did.
English is a mélange of other parts and pieces. While originally a Germanic tongue, there are structures and vocabulary from Romance and other languages, as well as unique grammar developed to accommodate those infusions.
While it\'s not necessarily pretty-sounding (to non-speakers, English sounds like German spoken with a mouthful of marbles), it lends itself to being comprehensible even when used by non-native speakers with a very strong accent.
If anything, the internet will be the death of the complexity of language as many users devolve into the twitter-imposed chatspeak of word truncation. Words are thoughts, limiting one unintentionally limits the other. Imagine the consequences had William Shakespeare been limited to 160 characters.