For those of you who enjoyed the stats from my presentation at BrightonSEO Conference (much retweeted) here are the numbers I discussed together with their sources:
56% of the content on the internet is in English, and
29% of the internet-using population speaks English
5% of the global population speaks English as their first language
14% of the world’s population speaks Chinese
12 languages are required to reach 80% of the world’s population
21 languages are needed to reach 90% of the world’s population
The raw data is available on Wikipedia languages used on the internet and languages by number of native speakers.