There is an updated version of my data here:
http://www.gerv.net/hacking/l10n-stats/
I thought a web page is probably better than a blog post.

Among the new features are:

- Several bug fixes and data improvements; the Firefox percentages have
  gone up but, sadly, so have the IE ones.

- Information on Opera.

- A new line showing how IE fares if you don't include LIPs.

- A new line for "registered l10n teams"

- A tab which shows that _if_ a browser team were using this data to
  guide where to put l10n team effort, what languages they should be
  focussing on. This data is provided for Firefox, IE and Opera.

Thank you to everyone who gave me useful feedback. Please let me know of
any further improvements I could make, within the general parameters of
the method.

Gerv

Gervase Markham napisa:

Which figure did you take as basis for the world net population?

And, I propose to emphasize the data for Firefox (languages, figures) by
other color, bold, or italics.

Michael

Hi Gerv,

this time I took a closer look at the figures, too. When I tried to
find out why you "recommend" Belarussian to Microsoft, I came across
your numbers for Kurdish. You list the number of speakers with
1,687,500. This is way too low.

According to SIL, which is one of the authorities, the total number of
speakers for Kurmanci, the Kurdish variant that the Kurdish team works
in, is 9,113,505.
(http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=kmr)

The respective number for Belarussian is 9,081,102 according to
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=bel

I don't ask you to change the recommendation to Microsoft, but please
correct the number of Kurdish speakers accordingly. I dont' argue for
one million more or less, but 9 millions against 1 million is a bit of
a difference.

Best regards,
Erdal

Those figures are per-country, and are mostly from the CIA World
Factbook. Better figures for a particular country are welcome (I've
already had some for Chinese).

Could do. Exactly which Firefox figures, though? After 3.0 has been out
for a few weeks, and the few packs we are waiting for have arrived,
it'll be more clear.

Gerv

It is important to remember that these are not total speakers, they are
total speakers in the Net population.

I currently have Kurdish down as 9% of the population of Iran. The net
population of Iran is 18,000,000 - leading to the figure of 1,687,500.
(That's slightly more than 18,000,000 * 0.09 because I don't have
figures for everyone in Iran, and the unknowns are distributed
proportionally among the languages I do have figures for.)

I know that there are Kurdish people in Turkey and Syria, at least. If
you are able to point me at good language breakdowns for those
countries, or better figures for Iran, then I could make a change.

Belarusian is the figure it is because currently I have 100% of the net
population of Belarus (5478000) down as speaking Belarusian. Again, if
you have a better breakdown, I would be happy to hear it.

Gerv

Gervase Markham napisa:

Thanks. But, what I meant is that you should mention the figure on your
web site.

I didn't mean any concrete figures, just the figures which are relevant
for Fx and are mentioned in the FAQ to emphasize the current state.

Michael

Done.

Done.

Gerv

Gervase Markham napsal(a):

CIA number for Czech net population is 3.541.000. But net population in
Czech is growing ... so now we have 4.816.393

Agency   -> http://en.netmonitor.cz/
Research -> http://netmonitor.cz/outputs/2008_04_TOTAL.pdf

Pavel