Languages of Bitcointalk

[dree12]

Thought this might be interesting. Below, a chart of posts on BitcoinTalk by language. (apologies for the bad quality)

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[malevolent]

Thought this might be interesting. Below, a chart of posts on BitcoinTalk by language. (apologies for the bad quality)

That's actually a chart of posts by language section not by language overall.

Some language topics in the 'Other' section have more posts than some of the 'Local' forums.

For example the Greek topic in the 'Other' section has 170 posts whereas the Hebrew local forum has only 115 posts.

[solex]

Thought this might be interesting. Below, a chart of posts on BitcoinTalk by language. (apologies for the bad quality)

That's actually a chart of posts by language section not by language overall.

Some language topics in the 'Other' section have more posts than some of the 'Local' forums.

For example the Greek topic in the 'Other' section has 170 posts whereas the Hebrew local forum has only 115 posts.

Yes. It is interesting.
Wonder how many forums are hosted on completely different sites? I imagine that China has a local one (or more) which many people there use.

[malevolent]

Wonder how many forums are hosted on completely different sites?

I know 2 Polish forums, one has 56 000 posts another 15 000.
And some computer hardware forums have few thousand long posts topics on Bitcoin

[dree12]

Thought this might be interesting. Below, a chart of posts on BitcoinTalk by language. (apologies for the bad quality)

That's actually a chart of posts by language section not by language overall.

Some language topics in the 'Other' section have more posts than some of the 'Local' forums.

For example the Greek topic in the 'Other' section has 170 posts whereas the Hebrew local forum has only 115 posts.

Maybe the Greeks should get their own forum then. I think a barrier should be set at, say, 500 posts in Other to get a new subforum.

[tysat]

Thought this might be interesting. Below, a chart of posts on BitcoinTalk by language. (apologies for the bad quality)

That's actually a chart of posts by language section not by language overall.

Some language topics in the 'Other' section have more posts than some of the 'Local' forums.

For example the Greek topic in the 'Other' section has 170 posts whereas the Hebrew local forum has only 115 posts.

Maybe the Greeks should get their own forum then. I think a barrier should be set at, say, 500 posts in Other to get a new subforum.

I'd go with posts/topic per day over total volume.

[malevolent]

How about number of views indicating higher traffic and maybe numer of users?

Polish topic in Other section has 115 but 18 000 views while the Hebrew subforum with the same amount of posts has 1/3 of that (and being on the front page it is much more visible so that's very odd).

I would also look at the number of people that download different bitcoin clients and see which countries download more, e.g. http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/stats/map

[dree12]

To collect better statistics, I have updated my script. It will take the largest threads in Other and assign them to their own languages. Here's the table I am using right now:

Code:

9261: Greek
29863: Turkish
33050: Czech
27736: Filipino
2157: Polish
25215: Croatian
1568: Esperanto

Here's the current output:

Code:

"Greek","176"
"Turkish","155"
"Czech","151"
"Filipino","138"
"Polish","124"
"Croatian","113"
"Esperanto","110"

I also made a chart explaining the changes in languages over the past 4 days. The only noticeable change was Chinese surpassing French.



In the 4 days of data I collected, it seems BitcoinTalk has become more multilingual. English, Italian, Russian, and Hebrew lost usage share. All other languages with subsections gained usage share. Leading the chase was Chinese, followed quite distantly by Spanish, Romanian, and German.

In terms of absolute growth, English outpaced all other languages combined. Of the other languages, Russian and Chinese led absolute growth, with German a close third.

In terms of relative growth, Chinese puts the rest of the languages far into the dust, growing almost 25% in four days. Korean came second, but with few posts to start with. Italian demonstrated the most laggard relative growth of the languages tracked.

I will also retroactively add data for the new languages. Updates for them coming later.

[wumpus]

I will also retroactively add data for the new languages. Updates for them coming later.

Thanks for making these stats. I'm very interested in how much bitcoin is being used/discussed in various countries.

Wonder how many forums are hosted on completely different sites? I imagine that China has a local one (or more) which many people there use.

There are various Chinese forums about bitcoin in general and bitcoin mining.
I found quite a few while searching for bitcoin in Chinese "比特币" on Google and using translate.

[dree12]

Here's today's update. As usual, these numbers only reflect BitcoinTalk and so should not be extrapolated to Bitcoin as a whole.

§1. Overview

20 languages (including the pseudo-language Skandinavisk) were enumerated at UTC 0:00 for the past 5 days. These languages seem to be the only ones featuring greater than 100 posts on BitcoinTalk. 1284 posts could not be established as being of a particular language, and so were not enumerated.

§2. Trends


§3. Analysis
As usual, languages can be split into 3 distinct categories. One category, the high-volume languages contains English exclusively. The second, the medium-volume languages, contains most of the languages with their own subforum. The final category, the low-volume languages, consists of Hebrew, Korean, and the Other language threads.

High-volume languages are uneventful as usual. English, as a mature language, displays stable growth.

Medium-volume languages are most spread out of any category. The spread seems to be decreasing, however, as Dutch grows faster than Russian (in relative terms). By far most eventful, however, is the rapid growth of Chinese. Chinese is now exceeding Russian in terms of absolute growth, and is by far the fastest in terms of relative growth. The Chinese subforum has grown over 35% in the past 5 days, likely driven by news reports in the Chinese mainland. After overtaking France yesterday, growth seems to be accelerating and the gap between Chinese and Portuguese, although still large, is shrinking.

Low-volume languages are spread over an extremely narrow range. As usual, these languages display extremely erratic growth. Greek has recently shown some faster-than-usual growth, and is now comfortably ahead of a stalling Turkish. There is no clear explanation for the growth in Greece, as it does not seem to coincide with any media reports.

§4. Remarks
It will be interesting to watch the continued growth of Chinese. In terms of activity, measured by the absolute increase in posts for the last 5 days, Chinese is now second only to English, recently overtaking Russian. If Chinese growth continues, BitcoinTalk would have to consider new moderators for the forum, especially as most global moderators do not understand Chinese.

Increased usage in Greek is also interesting, but seems more erratic and likely a one-time phenomenon.

[theymos]

If Chinese growth continues, BitcoinTalk would have to consider new moderators for the forum, especially as most global moderators do not understand Chinese.

John K speaks Chinese and does some moderation there.

[dree12]

If Chinese growth continues, BitcoinTalk would have to consider new moderators for the forum, especially as most global moderators do not understand Chinese.

John K speaks Chinese and does some moderation there.

Ah, I forgot he was a global mod too. He is also listed as a local mod. Is there a particular reason for this double-listing?

[theymos]

Ah, I forgot he was a global mod too. He is also listed as a local mod. Is there a particular reason for this double-listing?

So people in that community know who to contact if they need help.

I'm going to add a Greek section soon, so we'll see how that affects the number of posts. Thanks for the stats.

[dree12]

Here's today's update. As usual, these numbers only reflect BitcoinTalk and so should not be extrapolated to Bitcoin as a whole.

§1. Overview

20 languages (including the pseudo-language Skandinavisk) were enumerated at approximately UTC 0:00 for the past 6 days. These languages seem to be the only ones featuring greater than 100 posts on BitcoinTalk. 1287 posts could not be established as being of a particular language, and so were not enumerated.

§2. Trends


§3. Analysis
As usual, languages can be split into 3 distinct categories. One category, the high-volume languages contains English exclusively. The second, the medium-volume languages, contains most of the languages with their own subforum. The final category, the low-volume languages, consists of Greek, Hebrew, Korean, and the Other language threads.

High-volume languages are uneventful as usual. English, as a mature language, displays stable growth.

Medium-volume languages are most spread out of any category. The spread seems to be decreasing, however, as Dutch grows faster than Russian (in relative terms). Dutch is gaining ground on Skandinavisk, and may pass it soon. By far most eventful, however, remains the rapid growth of Chinese. Although relative growth has stalled yesterday, absolute growth remains second to only English. The Chinese subforum has grown almost 50% in the past 6 days, likely driven by news reports in the Chinese mainland. The gap between Chinese and Portuguese, although still large, is shrinking.

Low-volume languages are spread over an extremely narrow range. As usual, these languages display extremely erratic growth. Greek has recently shown rapid growth, likely accelerated yesterday by its promotion from thread to subforum. It is now comfortably ahead of a stalling Turkish thread. Greek's growth is most readily attributed to its new subforum. Also of note is Polish, a threaded language, which yesterday exceeded Korean, a language with a subforum.

§4. Remarks
It will be interesting to watch the continued growth of Chinese and Greek. In terms of activity, measured by the absolute increase in posts for the last 6 days, Chinese is now second only to English. Greek activity is also on the rise, with more posts in the last 6 days than Skandinavisk.

Some boards are stalling, likely due to low populations of speakers. Despite being 4 times larger, the Italian board has seen less activity than Romanian in the last 6 days. Similarly, Skandinavisk has been growing slower than Greek—surprising, given that it is almost 10 times as big.

§5. Appendix
With 6 days of data, it is now possible to create a pie chart on posts made in the past 6 days only. This is demonstrative of the activity levels of a board. These data are important for considering how many moderators should be assigned to a particular board.

[dree12]

I've been rather busy recently and so could not prepare the full reports. As the data is generated by cron job, that has not been affected. Here's an updated chart revealing the end of the Chinese, Greek, and Korean growth cycles. What country is next?