The Arabic language is the fifth-largest language on Earth. Yet despite having over 237 million native speakers, Arabic is the main language of less than 1% of web pages on the internet. In the early days of computers and internet connections, Roman scripts were the only ones available, so Arabic web users had to use transliteration or revert to English. By the late 1990s, however, Arabic script had been made available online, the first Arabic language email was launched in 2000, and Facebook added the script in 2009. Actual content in the Arabic language, however, still remains uncommon.
One of the reasons for this could be the pervasiveness of English as the lingua franca online. Arabic language bloggers frequently use English, both to reach a wider audience, and to avoid the censors in their home country. None of the countries where Arabic is considered a native language has fully uncensored access to the internet, and many of them actively prosecute their citizens for posting on blasphemous or “inappropriate” topics. Another reason is simple economics: the average income per capita in many Arabic countries does not allow for a significant portion of the population to have computer access, and social media is accessed via cellular phones.
Yasmin Omer, the owner of Dot Shabaka (which means ‘network’ in Arabic) also believes that having fully Arabic websites is important. His company provides websites in Arabic, using dot shabaka, rather than .com or .net, to encourage Arabic speakers to start populating the internet with websites in their native tongue. Since dot shabaka is not hosted in a specific Arabic country, it is free from censorship and sanctions that plague many Arabic or partially-Arabic sites.
What are your thoughts on Arabic’s presence on the Internet? Let us know in the comments!
