[LINK] Arabic and the net

[Roger Clarke]

At 22:15 +0000 14/12/09, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>Egypt puts archives on Web to boost Arabic content
>Mon Dec 14, 2009 1:13pm EST  http://www.reuters.com
...
>Analysts say Arabic is just 1 per cent of Web content.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic
>It is spoken by more than 280 million[1] people as a first language, 
>most of whom live in the Middle East and North Africa, and by 250 
>million[2] more as a second language. Arabic has many different, 
>geographically-distributed spoken varieties, some of which are 
>mutually unintelligible.[4] Standard Arabic is widely taught in 
>schools, universities, and used in workplaces, government and the 
>media.
>Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) derives from Classical Arabic, the only 
>surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group ...

280 / 6,800 = 4.1%, so, given the dominance of English on the Web, 
it's doing pretty well already, and the Egyptian archives could be a 
big boost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_Wikipedia
>As of December 2009, it has over 107,000 articles, 600,000 pages, 
>240,000 registered users and 6600 files. The Arabic Wikipedia is 
>currently the 27th largest edition of Wikipedia by article count, 
>and is the first Semitic language to exceed 100,000 articles.

[I failed to quickly find a table of languages showing estimated 
numbers of first-language speakers, largest first.]

http://ar.wikipedia.org/

-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
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Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University