Chinese will take over the Internet in 5 years

According to the stats and this pretty infographic, Chinese will become the dominant Internet language in just a few years.

Or maybe sooner. The Next Web published a neat infographic that breaks down the world’s 1.97 billion Internet users by language and found that while English is still the dominant language of the Internet at 27.3 percent (536.6 million), Chinese is catching up fast. It is already number two with 22.6 percent (444.9 million) and is growing at a pace much faster than English (what you’re reading now!). In the last 10 years, Chinese grew by 1,277.4 percent while English grew at only 281.2 percent, or about 4.5 times slower. Other fast growing languages include Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, and Spanish.

Those of you who live in fear of the East have a few years to escape the Net. TNW estimates that it will probably take 3-5 years for China to finally overtake us. On a side note, our scientific research expects views of Panda sneezing YouTube videos will increase by roughly 1,277.4 percent in the next 10 years.

To view a larger version of this map, click here. If you like pretty pictures, check out this graph comparing Facebook to Twitter and this cool map of the world created solely by mapping Facebook users.