Categories: Top story of the day

Which language is the fastest growing on the internet?

If you said English, you are wrong. It is not Chinese either. It is Arabic. No wonder they had the Arab Spring. Arabic has grown by a whopping 5 296.6 percent from 2.5 million users in 2000 to 135.6 million last year. Russian is in second place. It grew by 2 721.8 percent from 3.1 million to 87.5 million users. Chinese is number three. It now has 649.4 million users up from 32.3 million, an increase of 1910.3 percent. Chinese is now the second most widely used language on the internet after English. English has 800.6 million users, a 468.8 percent increase from 2000 when it had 140.8 million users. There are now 2.8 billion internet users across the world, up from 361 million in 2000. Zimbabwe has 5.2 million internet users, most of them using their mobile phones, but with some people having three or more phones, there could be a lot of double counting.

(107 VIEWS)

Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

Share
Published by
Charles Rukuni

Recent Posts

Is it true that 4 million Zimbabweans went without food on several occasions last year?

At least four million people in Zimbabwe reported that they had gone without food on…

November 5, 2026

Did you know that four of the world’s largest banks are all in China?

Four of the world’s largest banks are all in China. Assets of the Industrial and…

October 15, 2026

Zimbabwe one of the 27 countries in the world where the richest 0.1% has more wealth than the bottom 80%

Zimbabwe is one of the 27 countries in the world where the richest 0.1% of…

October 2, 2026

Zimbabwe third among the least free countries in SADC

Zimbabwe has been ranked third among the least free countries in Southern Africa but it…

May 24, 2026

Why I had a girlfriend two months after my wife’s death- Take 1

I had always considered it a curse for a wife to die before her husband.…

May 18, 2026

Why I had a girlfriend two months after my wife’s death

This is a true story about the challenges and loneliness I faced when my wife…

May 17, 2026