Top 10 World Languages
Monday, November 7, 2005
2 comments
Purnendu Chatterji intrigued me today by saying, that Bengali is the 5th largest spoken language in the world. Well, I looked it up …
- Mandarin: 1 Billion+
- English: 508 Million
- Hindi: 497 Million
- Spanish: 392 Million
- Russian: 277 Million
- Arabic: 246 Million
- Bengali: 211 Million
- Portuguese: 191 Million
- Malay-Indonesian: 159 Million
- French: 129 Million
Here are the languages that just barely missed the list (from the most popular to the least): German, Japanese, Urdu, Punjabi, Korean, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Cantonese, Wu, Vietnamese, Javanese, Italian, Turkish, Tagalog, and Thai.
Why do we care?
Because, the Media industry is moving online, and a question that is looming large: what other languages besides the obvious ones like Mandarin, need major Internet presence? The list above starts to provide some indicators …
Key question to answer: Which of these languages have sustainable (a) Internet Presence (b) Online Advertising Pull behind them?
[...] It would also pay to dissect the behaviors of specific ethnic segments, and their quirks. For example, the Bengalis tend to be voracious readers and consumers of culture. An online Bengali literary magazine (like Desh) that is supported by a branded TV Channel with cross-marketing of culture and literature could be an interesting opportunity. [Read this article on the Top 10 World Languages; Bengali is spoken by 211 Million people.] [...]
As a working research intern on Multi-lingual-systems, languages like Mandarin, Hindi, Bengali, and other Indian Languages are gaining popularity in the Cross Lingual Information Retrieval Domain.
With the content in the native languages, Internet can reach more people and truly, more effectively!