Cyber-geography of languages

Part 2: the demographic factor and the growth of Asian languages and Arabic

Authors

  • Daniel Pimienta Observatory of Linguistic & Cultural Diversity on the Internet
  • Gilvan Müller de Oliveira UNESCO Chair on Language Policies for Multilingualism, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/irie491

Keywords:

Cyber-Geography of Languages, Multilingualism, Linguistic Diversity, Disinformation, Demolinguistic, Cyber-geographic, Cultural Diversity, Bias

Abstract

Part 1 of this study explains the methodology, sources, biases, and results of the recent study on the presence on the Internet of the 330 languages with more than one million L1 speakers, and the reality of the place of English on the Internet. This part analyzes the results in terms of cyber-geography for the other languages. It appears that the languages of Europe, especially English, are still dominating the Internet but that the languages of Asia and the Arabic world are in a strong progression and will take the lead, in terms of connected speakers. The languages of Africa are suffering from the difficulty of many African countries to overcome the digital divide: however, demographic long-term future clearly will favor in the long run African languages and the European languages with a notable presence in Africa (by order of importance: English, French and Portuguese).

References

Calvet, Louis-Jean. Les marchés aux langues. Les effets linguistiques de la Mondialisation. Paris, Plon, 2002. Müller de Oliveira, Gilvan. The system of national standards and the demolinguistic evolution of Portuguese.

In Muhr, Rudolf in collaboration with Eugenia Duarte, Amália Mendes, Carla Amorós Negre and Juan A. Thomas (Ed.) Pluricentric languages: non-dominant varieties worldwide: Volume 2. The Pluricentricity of Portuguese and Spanish: New concepts and descriptions. Frankfurt a.M. / Wien, Peter Lang Verlag, 2016, 31-43.

Pimienta, Daniel, Müller de Oliveira, Gilvan. Cyber-geography of languages. P1: method, results and focus on English – International Review on Information Ethics, Vol 32 (12/2022)

Pimienta, Daniel. New and improved version of an alternative approach to the production of linguistic indicators on the Internet. Observatory of linguistic and cultural diversity on the Internet – 8/2021. http://funredes.org/lc2021/ALI%20V2-EN.pdf

Steyaert, Janssens. M. Re-considering language within a cosmopolitan understanding: Toward a multilingual franca approach in international business studies. J Int Bus Stud 45, 623–639 (2014).

United Nations. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects, the 2012 Revision. (2015)

http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/

Downloads

Published

2022-11-30

How to Cite

Pimienta, Daniel, and Gilvan Müller de Oliveira. 2022. “Cyber-Geography of Languages: Part 2: The Demographic Factor and the Growth of Asian Languages and Arabic”. The International Review of Information Ethics 32 (1). Edmonton, Canada. https://doi.org/10.29173/irie491.

Issue

Vol. 32 No. 1 (2022): Emerging Technologies and Changing Dynamics of Information (ETCDI) Special Issue

Section

Article

License

Under the CC-BY 4.0 license, you have the right to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.