Business and Blogging

Globlogging’s Explosive Growth

by Des Walsh on August 31st, 2007

Today’s guest blogger, Hal Licino, points to some interesting statistics on the languages of blogging and lays claim to a neologism.

At the height of the Roman Empire, the single lingua franca of Latin was used as the official language of commerce and literature from Scotland to the Nile. Latin became an overlay onto the myriad languages of Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa, and citizens would either have to learn Latin, or effectively abandon any hopes of ameliorating their economic position.

Two millennia later, an obscure West Germanic offshoot spoken by barely 6 million Britons in Shakespeare’s time has become the lingua franca of our age. The majority of the 6.7 billion people on Earth today face a similar dilemma to the Illyrians and Cappadocians: They either learn their world’s common language or they can just toil in the fields for the rest of their lives.

Although I can write in six languages to some degree, it would never occur to me to blog in any language but English. With the current predominance of English in the world, it is hard to believe that just a few decades ago the global language of diplomacy, literature and the arts was French. Yet it might surprise many webizens to discover that English is not the primary language in the blogosphere. Rather surprisingly, Japanese is the number one blog language in the world.

Given the fact that there are only 83 million people in Japan aged 15-64 and according to Dave Sifry’s Technorati blog they are generating 37% of the world’s 72 million blogs, some quick math would show that 26.6 million or 32% of all adult Japanese blog!

The actual number of individuals would be somewhat lower since it is likely that there is a fair number of Japanese bloggers with multiple blogs, yet for a single country with only 1.8% of the world’s population to dominate blogging so thoroughly is definitely impressive. It is important to note, however, that Japanese is rarely spoken outside of the land of the rising sun, so it is safe to discuss a 45 million global non-Japanese blogging universe or Globlogging (if history will prove that I’ve coined this phrase, I hereby grant permission to erect statues of me, preferably astride a valiant steed, in your town squares…)

There are more native speakers of Spanish in the world than English, but the dearth of Spanish blogging is worrying. It is almost unbelievable that my native language, Italian, is better represented in the blogosphere than Spanish. For Italian which is only spoken on the “boot”, the two islands and a few neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Toronto and Sydney to overtake Spanish is a testament to my paisanos’ newly discovered substitute for La Dolce Vita.

Of course, Italian is only a relative term. Italian has Anglicized itself more than almost any other language right up into the official government lingo, where they engage in Question Time Debate between the Ministro della Devolution and the Ministro del Welfare.

It certainly does not require years of Italian language study to understand this completely typical Italian sentence:

Ho testato il home page link con il network hardware tool che ho downloadato dal provider nel weekend ma il Windows display dice che il default file sul master hard disk nel box e corruptato.

It seems as if it’s Shakespeare 10, Dante 1.

Globlogging is vastly askew as compared to the languages spoken by the people of this world. Certainly many international bloggers are defaulting to English to broaden their appeal and readership past national borders, but it is safe to say that major languages such as Spanish, Russian, Chinese, French, German and Portuguese are decidedly underrepresented in the blogosphere. These potential bloggers cannot be expected to bow to the lingua franca forever, thus national/linguistic pride will spur them to greater activity in the near future. The growth opportunities that these languages pose could constitute the next phase in the expansion of blogging, and the strategic, perceptive business blogger would be well advised to take the trend towards Globlogging into consideration.

Hal Licino is an international bestselling author, ghostwriter, screenwriter and blogger residing in Canada, Italy, Britain, Australia, or wherever the fancy hits him.

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POSTED IN: Blogging, General, International