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Days numbered for English as 'language of the web'

Chinese will overtake English by 2007...

By Jon Bernstein

Published: 7 December 2001 08:56 GMT

Despite its US origins, the Internet's non-English speaking users are set to dominate the web as early as next year.

According to a United Nations symposium which met yesterday to discuss multilingual internet addresses, just over half of the 460 million internet users worldwide have English as their first language.

By next year the situation will be reversed and the UN predicts that by 2003 a third of web users will be using a non-English language online.

English will lose its number one spot for good in 2007 when Chinese becomes the single most-used language on the web.

For related news, see
The boffin's book of cyber-talk
http://www.silicon.com/a49697
From Russia with Lycos
http://www.silicon.com/a46437
Happy 10th Birthday to the Word Wide Web
http://www.silicon.com/a46311
Instant Messaging crosses the language barrier
http://www.silicon.com/a46909

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