The limits of my language mean the limits of my world

Written on 3rd March 2009                                                                                                              18 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

The title of this post is a quote from Wittgenstein which kept popping into my head as I was traveling through Europe these past weeks. I visited France on a ski trip, stopped over in Vienna by airplane and then traveled to Budapest by car.

I speak Dutch, some English, a little German and unfortunately only know one word in Hungarian. The conference I’m visiting only had 4 English presentations: my own, Ernst-Jan’s and two more. Unfortunately none of the other presentations used the only Hungarian word I know.

Hungary has a population of about 10 million people. After WW1 the country got split up and Hungary lost 72% of its land (a sensitive subject even now) which means that there are about 14.5 million people who still speak the language.

In Europe we tend to compare ourselves to the US regularly. We are jealous of the great start-up cultures in cities like San Francisco and the entrepreneurial spirit that so many Americans seem to have. But how much difference is there really between these two parts of the world? Lets take a good look at some statistics.

Population
The US has a population of more than 300 million. Compare that to Hungary and you aren’t too well off. Compare it to Europe as a whole and the figures look different. There are more than 700 million Europeans. That is twice as big an audience as the US?! Suddenly I don’t feel so alone anymore.

Language
Those 700 million people are divided by language, right? They all speak different languages so it is too difficult to reach them? Well yeah, there are 23 official langauges in the European Union and 65 languages and/or dialects in total. That sure sounds fragmented.

Everybody in the United States at least speaks English, right? Well, almost. English is not the official language of the United States but more than 82% of the population speaks it as their native language.

Lets look at Europe again: 51% of all europeans speak English as a second or first language. That actually means that there are more people who speak English in Europe (357 million) than there are people in the United States, in total!

Money
It isn’t really about the language is it? It must be about the money. The United States is a richer market. But is that really true?

It looks like the GDP of the US was about USD 14,330,000 in 2008 and USD 18,930,000 in Europe (In millions of dollars).Yep, Europe is doing a lot better than the US when it comes to GDP. Maybe GPD growth? Is the US growing faster than we are? I don’t know what the results will be of the current economic crisis but when you look at from 2006 till 2007 the United States GDP grew 4.9% and our GDP grew 16%.

Maybe you say I’m making these numbers up as a biased European? Nope, they are from the CIA World Fact Book. Surely the CIA can be trusted on their own numbers?

The more I think about it the more interesting Europe becomes to me:

- There are more people in Europe
- More people speak English in Europe than there are people in the US
- We have more money in Europe than in the US
- We are growing faster

I have to admit, all these ‘facts’ are based on statistics. And we all know how trustworthy those are. But I do suggest you do your own research and look at what you can find out about the differences between Europe and the United States before you pack your bags and move to San Francisco.

Now all that is left for me to do is convince all the Internet Entrepreneurs in Hungary, and Europe, to actually start speaking English…

airplane, budapest, conference, culture, English, entrepreneur, Europe, hungary, language, markets, money, research, travel, world

18 Comments »

Auto Reply: I am not in the office at the moment…

Written on 31st October 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

The BBC reports on this hilarious road sign. As you can see the English is clear enough but the Welsh at the bottom reads “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”

When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the out of office reply was what they needed.

So that is what they printed on the sign. Apparently it happens so often that a local newspaper has a special section showing all the Welsh/English translation screw ups.

This one is just amazing…

auto reply, English, sign, translation, welsh

3 Comments »

Convincing Arabic Wikipedians to Write in Arabic

Written on 22nd July 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Joop Dorresteijn, East Asia correspondent

It turns out that the Arabic language is not really represented Wikipedia, a problem in two ways. Here’s why: First, the people that can’t speak English have access to limited resources, and second: those who actually have Internet are usually the rich, well educated people that have no problem to talk English on the web, which creates a gap between the Arabic and Western countries.

Knowledge is power

The Herald Tribune reports about a group of Egyptians that are a little bit embarrassed about the size of their Arabic Wikipedia base. One of the organizers of an Egyptian Wikipedia conference explains: “The gap between the Arab world and the Western world is not about money or politics. It is about knowledge. There are many examples of Egyptians who travel to Europe or the U.S. and become successful. If people had access to the same knowledge …” As he underlines the importance of knowledge sharing. The Internet can play an important role in bridging this gap.

Not much Arabic content

The Arabic online Wiki content is little, in comparison: the English Wikipedia consists of over 2.5 million articles which is a fair number with over 400 million native speakers. However, the Arabic version consists of only 65.000 articles but counts a whopping 300 million native speakers. At a news conference last week, a reporter asked Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, if there was a sort of Bias against Arabic.

Wikipedia accessible for the poor

Wikipedia, with its open nature and lack of proper sources can be considered unreliable for many, but its often the only source available for the poor. For Egypt and other countries, there is little information available for some of the people. A possible reason for Egypt is that less then 10 percent of 80 million Egyptians are online, and those who have it are well educated and usually express themselves in English.

The Internet opens Egypt open to the world

The visa procedure is very difficult for Egyptians, no matter which country you want to go. Web applications such as Facebook and Wikipedia enables Egyptians to connect abroad. Nahla Ghoneim, a 23-year-old computer engineer at IT Works, said at the conference that young people in Egypt need to get involved in information technology “not just as consumers.”

English is the language on the web

The issue addressed by the Egyptians at the conference probably apply to more countries. In my opinion, the language of the web is English. The fact that everyone speaks the same language makes the Internet as powerful as it is today. However, one can’t expect the poor to talk English overnight.

Arabic, Egypt, English, jimmy wales, wikipedia

3 Comments »