Worksheet 9.

5: Exploring ‘The
digital language divide’ article
Unit 9.5 Language dominance and language death
This activity is based on the article ‘The digital language divide’ by Holly
Young, published in the the Guardian and available online.
(https://labs.theguardian.com/digital-language-divide/)

1 Before reading the article

Write 150–200 words on how you use digital media, specifically which
languages you use to access information and communicate with friends and
family. Are you aware of any debates about a ‘language divide’ on the
internet?

2 Read the article, then answer these questions

a What has happened to English’s share of cyberspace on the internet

since the 1990s?

b In what ways does the language people use on the internet shape their
experience of it according to the article?

c What language(s) do you use online and why?

d In what ways is Twitter used by different language groups? Does this

match your own experience of using Twitter?

© Cambridge University Press 2019

 e What points are made about Google and linguistic access?

f What do you understand by the term ‘traction’ with regard to languages

and quantity of search hits?

g How does Wikipedia content add to the language divide debate?

h What technology is being developed to bridge the online language

divide?

i In what ways do multilingual users have the potential to improve the

quality of information and discussion online?

k How can the internet also be a place for linguistic empowerment?

© Cambridge University Press 2019

 The Digital Language Divide
How does the language you speak shape your experience of the internet?
By Holly Young
Try to visualise the internet. For me, it is something hazy, suspended
somewhere above our heads as we gaze at our screens. It’s composed of
tiny, moving fragments of information and simultaneous conversations, and
it has no defined edges: it is limitless.

This vision of the internet as something infinite, open to be freely explored,

is perhaps both naive and arrogant but, as an English speaker, it is not a
sense of entitlement that is completely without reason. The first language
used on the internet was almost certainly English. By the mid 1990s it was
estimated that English made up 80% of the content.

However, from once dominating the web, English now represents just one
language in an online linguistic elite. English’s relative share of cyberspace
has shrunk to around 30%, while French, German, Spanish and Chinese have
all pushed into the top 10 languages online. Some of these have ballooned at
great speed: Chinese, for example, grew by 1277.4% between 2000 and
2010. Out of a roughly 6,000 languages in use today, this top 10 make up
82% of the total of the content on the internet.

Does the language you speak online matter? The unprecedented ability to
communicate and access information are all promises woven into the big
sell of the internet connection. But how different is your experience if your
mother tongue, for example, is Zulu rather than English?

The relationship between language and the internet is a growing area of

policy interest and academic study. The story emerging is one where
language profoundly affects your experience of the internet. It guides who
you speak to on social media and often how you behave in these
communities. It determines how much – if any – information you can access
on Wikipedia. Google searching “restaurants” in a certain language may
bring you back 10 times the results of doing so in another. And if your
language is endangered, it is possible it will never have a life online. Far
from infinite, the internet, it seems, is only as big as your language.

© Cambridge University Press 2019