218 LANGUAGE AND THE INTERNET
then, with some commentators predicting that before long the Web
(and the Internet as a whole) will be predominantly non-English,
as communications infrastructure develops in Europe, Asia, Africa,
and South America. A Global Reach survey^36 estimated that people
with Internet access in non-English-speaking countries increased
from 7 million to 136 million between 1995 and 2000. In 1998,
the total number of newly created non-English Web sites passed
that for newly created English Web sites, with Spanish, Japanese,
German, and French the chief players.^37 Alta Vista had si xEuro-
pean sites in early 2000, and were predicting that by 2002 less than
50% of the Web would be in English.^38 Graddol predicted an even
lower figure in due course, 40%.^39 In certain parts of the world, the
local language is already dominant. According to Japanese Inter-
net author Yoshi Mikami, 90% of Web pages in Japan are now in
Japanese.^40 A report published in October 2000 by Jupiter Media
Matrix^41 suggested that the greatest growth in online households
over the first half of the ’00s is going to be outside the USA. A
Nua Internet Survey the previous month^42 estimated that about
378 million people were online worldwide: of these, 161 million
were in North America and 106 million in Europe. What is inter-
esting is that 90 million were in Asia and the Pacific, a total that
is likely to pass Europe’s soon, given the population growth dif-
ferential between those two parts of the world. The 15 million in
Latin America and the tiny 3 million in Africa show the potential
for growth in those areas one day.
The Web is increasingly reflecting the distribution of language
presence in the real world, and there is a steadily growing set
(^36) http://www.euromktg.com/eng/GR. (^37) Lebert (1999).
(^38) Session on ‘Search Engines’ in Search Engine Strategies 2000, 27 April, May Fair Inter-
39 Continental, London.
Graddol (1998: 51). Only 32% of European Web surfers consult the Web in English,
40 according to data reported in Lebert (1999).
Interviewed in Lebert (1999). Mikami is the author of ‘The languages of the world
by computers and the Internet’, a site which includes information on a wide range
of languages, including data on their writing system, character set, and keyboard. See
41 http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/logos.
http://www.jupitermediamatrix.com.^42 http://www.nua.ie/surveys.