Chinese language to take over Internet
Although the web was founded using English, the swelling adoption of the world wide wibble is changing the web so much that the dominant language of the Internet is about to become Chinese, a report by Nextweb has suggested.
Currently the online population is about 1,966,514,816 people and of them 42 percent speak English. Another 32.6 per cent speak Chinese. Nextweb thinks that the extent that the Chinese market is growing means that the number of Chinese users will overtake English speakers.
It seems that the Chinese are trying to capitalise on this. Recently Chinese mandarins issued a decree requiring Chinese translations for all English words and phrases in newspapers, magazines and web sites.
The General Administration of Press and Publication website 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.