{"id":1236,"date":"2021-07-09T15:42:29","date_gmt":"2021-07-09T15:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2021-07-12T13:58:18","modified_gmt":"2021-07-12T13:58:18","slug":"wikimedia-and-the-diversity-of-languages-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinking.is.ed.ac.uk\/wir\/wikimedia-and-the-diversity-of-languages-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikimedia and the Diversity of Languages online – Guest post by Clea Strathmann"},"content":{"rendered":"

Globally,<\/span> over 7,000 languages are spoken<\/span><\/a> – only around 4% of people are native English speakers. Despite this, English holds the title of the \u201cLanguage of the internet<\/a>\u201d.  It dominates with Chinese almost 50% of global web traffic<\/a> with the top ten languages accounting for 76.9 percent of global internet users<\/a>. The majority of <\/span>African and Indigenous languages <\/span><\/a>are not recognised by Google’s search engine. <\/span><\/p>\n

When an English speaker searches for something on Google, a Wikipedia article typically appears as a top hit, often as a convenient infobox at the side of the browser. This is because English Wikipedia<\/span> has over 6 million articles<\/span><\/a>. Wikipedias in other languages are more limited – only two other Wikipedias (Cebuano and Swedish) have over 3 million articles, and the 20 largest Wikipedias have around 1 million entries each. Many of these articles are comparatively shorter than those in English Wikipedia. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Percentage of Wikipedia articles in each language group<\/a> – Western European language groups dominate Wikipedia.<\/p><\/div>\n

This lack of diversity restricts a significant portion of the world from access to knowledge that is readily-available to English speakers, and <\/span>disproportionately affects those who live in less-developed regions<\/span><\/a> who may not speak any of the internet\u2019s other dominant languages. Access to knowledge is vital for bridging the understanding between languages and cultures. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Knowledge creates understanding \u2013 understanding is sorely lacking in today\u2019s world. \u2013 Katherine Maher, <\/span>Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The United Nations has, as part of their sustainable development goals<\/a>, emphasised a need for equitable education and lifelong learning. To enable this, resources of knowledge must be available in all languages. But alongside access to knowledge, the lack of linguistic diversity <\/span>is a pressing issue for smaller languages, including indigenous languages <\/span>which are dying out at a rate of two languages per month<\/span><\/a>. For speakers of these languages, their extinction may also reflect the extinction of their culture and identity. <\/span><\/p>\n