São Paulo – From 2000 to 2011, Arabic was the language that grew the most among internet users: 2,501%. In 2011, 65 million people in Arab countries used the web, i.e. the world’s seventh largest number of users, according to a survey released last Tuesday (14th) by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The increase in Arabic speakers was followed by that of Russians, whose number increased by 1,825%, and Mandarin, which was up 1,478%. The language that saw the least growth was English: 1.4%.
The same survey showed that Portuguese became the fifth most widely used language on the internet. According to the ITU, 83 million people use Portuguese to communicate over the internet, up 990.1% from the year 2000.
According to the ITU, the increased presence of the Portuguese language on the web is a result of growing numbers of web users in Brazil, the Portuguese-speaking country with the largest population.
The most widely used language on the internet is English, at 565 million users, followed by Mandarin, with 510 million, and Spanish, with 165 million. There are 99 million Japanese-speaking users, followed by Portuguese, German (75 million) and Arabic. According to the ITU, as of 2011, the web had 2.099 billion users, up 481.7% from the year 2000.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
