What is Digg?77 Comments
- leetleo, on 11/04/2007, -0/+68I'd assume it probably has something to do with language.
- DRINKxREDxBULL, on 11/04/2007, -1/+56How many websites from the US link to foreign pages?
- supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -1/+48I have yet to see ONE US web site that links to fully chinese site.
LANGUAGE BARRIER, PEOPLE COME ON!!!! - zorlok, on 10/30/2007, -0/+22Maybe because they only speak Chinese?.... duh
- supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -1/+15Is anyone here even awake when they are commenting on Digg?
Did you maybe not think they dont link to "foreign" sites too much because the foreign sites are in English, or French or Zulu and not in Chinese symbols they can understand and read?!!
Im surprised 6% link to foreign sites. I bet you 95% of Chinese cannot speak a single word of English. Maybe those in the major cities, but the bulk of China's population lives in the rural areas and not in the skyscrapers making the business deals with Washington. - xpirateninjax, on 10/30/2007, -3/+16language barriers, throttling and country wide firewalls, cultural familiarity, government censorship - 6 percent sounds about right
- haiduz, on 10/29/2007, -0/+13I think it has a lot to do with websites outside of china not being in chinese
- SimonGray, on 10/29/2007, -0/+10I refuse to consider this shocking until I can see how it compares to other countries. Right now, it makes a lot of sense.
- theodenking, on 10/30/2007, -0/+9Did anyone NOT think this as soon as they read it? Wtf is wrong with the authors?
- karolgajda, on 10/30/2007, -1/+7This is officially the dumbest thing I've seen on Digg...this month at least.
- MonarchWastxD, on 10/29/2007, -1/+6*insane... and why?!
- JonyMill, on 10/29/2007, -0/+5Maybe we should be glad 1 billion chinese arent cruising around our sites. Imagine if Digg was big over there, the digg effects would make the internet scream bloody murder.
- supermanred, on 10/29/2007, -2/+7Everyone STFU!
- alibenx, on 10/29/2007, -1/+5But the bulk of China's population living in the rural areas probably isn't using the internet, so I'm not sure they really matter in this case.
- Jelfish, on 10/29/2007, -0/+4There is a phonetic system, but I don't think it's in Latin characters. In Taiwan, they use something called "Zhuyin fuhua" which are just other symbols to represent sound.
I think only people who speak certain western languages start with Pinyin because it would be a lot of trouble to first explain "Sh" "Ch" vs "S" "C" and "H" etc just to learn sounds.
Actually when I started learning Chinese, there were no phonics involved at all. We just started off with very basic words and every week, we'd practice writing and reading a few new words. It's not too bad if you already know how to speak it properly, which most school children in China would. Also, in Chinese, new words for things are usually made of compound words of existing words like "dragon shrimp" for "lobster" or "middle-nation" for "China" or "Beautiful-nation" for "United States" (yes, that's what it means literally) so there isn't an expansive list of synonyms to learn, just compounds. - fires, on 10/30/2007, -3/+6The web was invented by Sir Tim Berners Lee at CERN in Switzerland.
- vat0r, on 10/29/2007, -0/+3Jeez maybe it's because they use a different language? Translation technology on the web needs to improve for the net to become truly open. Alot of like minded people simply cannot understand each other.
- shazzb0t, on 10/29/2007, -0/+3Seriously, why should anyone really be shocked by this? Granted China is or will become one of the biggest English speaking countries in the world (as in nation with the most English speakers, native or otherwise), but perhaps the author should have thought about this one a bit harder.The same is probably true of all other nations where English is not the native tongue.
- farboo, on 10/29/2007, -0/+3More specifically, what proportion of sites in major languages link to sites in other languages. How many US sites link to non-English (as opposed to non-US) pages?
- jwolcott, on 10/30/2007, -1/+4Let's face it, China is so big it doesn't need the rest of us...
- inactive, on 10/29/2007, -0/+295% of chinese cannot speak a single word of english? try pulling your head out of your ass and your statistics can follow suit
- SimonGray, on 10/30/2007, -2/+4"and not in Chinese symbols they can understand and read?!!"
To be fair, I think Chinese children learn latin characters before they learn Chinese characters. They use the latin characters as a phonetic alphabet to teach chinese characters more easily :-) - drizzlelicious, on 10/29/2007, -2/+4OMG!!111oneoneoneeleven CONSPIRACY
- tdelet, on 10/29/2007, -0/+2And they're all porn...
- gann, on 10/29/2007, -0/+2Most of the foreign news sites (eg. bbc, cnn), image sites (eg. flickr), blogs (eg. blogspot) and even search engines are blocked anyway, so why linking outside?
- yojiffyskippy, on 10/31/2007, -1/+3Obviously due to the Great-Firewall of China.
- morpheus69, on 10/29/2007, -0/+2As a percentage of the population, almost no Chinese people speak or read English. I'm actually surprised at the 6% figure... it seems high to me. I would be surprised if more than 1% of the Chinese population can read English... and why should they, they have a perfectly fine language of their own!
- lithera, on 10/29/2007, -0/+2Agree, this is the first thing that sprung to my mind when I read the article.
In China it's pretty hard to find someone that speaks English on a reasonable level. The only ones that are able to do that are the Chinese who get in contact with Western people on a regular basis. Think tourism or via business, however that percentage is very very low.
Actually most people I met in China couldn't even get past "hello", simple words like yes or no are unknown for most Chinese.
So why would they link to websites in a language they don't understand?
Give it a few more years and that percentage of links will go drastically up, the younger generations are trying to learn English very hard, grab every opportunity they can to pick up a few words. The international net will follow after that. - IgWannA, on 10/29/2007, -0/+1"Only 6% of Chinese Websites Link to Foreign Sites"
perhaps because most chinese people can't read non-chinese websites?? sigh - supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1They are just wishing Bush invades Iran and gets into a war with Putin (dragging along USA and Russia in tow). It would do wonders for China to just sit there and watch them kill themselves.
- WikiEasy, on 10/29/2007, -1/+2nm wrong post
- ubergeek09, on 10/30/2007, -1/+2This is not surprising in any way shape or form, I mean the people speak Chinese, come on.
- WikiEasy, on 10/29/2007, -0/+1Digg users are so stupid. Your comment should be dugg up. Instead, all the American-hating idiots are just burying your comment not due to merit, but due to their own personal agendas.
- rusty123jimi, on 10/30/2007, -5/+6Well...we did invent the damn thing...
- Napoleone, on 10/29/2007, -0/+1Citation: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113763907007950547 ...
- Y0tsuya, on 10/29/2007, -0/+1The Chinese can learn the pinyin phonetic system forwards and backwards and still not speak a lick of English, just as English speakers can't understand French or German unless they STUDY it.
- supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Some interesting numbers for those interested:
http://www2.ignatius.edu/faculty/turner/languages. ...
Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
English (480 million)
Spanish (320 million)
Russian (285 million)
French (265 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (221 million)
Portuguese (188 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Japanese (133 million)
German (109 million) - supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1You forgot to put arrows pointing up to your nickname before your statement.
- slaystench, on 10/29/2007, -0/+1The articles that make it on the front page amaze me sometimes.
- victrola, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Are you kidding? With America's immigrant populations? Stop flattering yourself.
- pseudononymist, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1You just won the award for outstanding excellence in the field of meaningless statistics
- WikiEasy, on 10/29/2007, -0/+1Digg would never be allowed, because it would violate their "harmonious society", aka censorship.
- pseudononymist, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Any site that considers Taiwan a country would probably be blocked in China, and any person or site that considers SF, Toronto, and Vancouver countries would get seriously Dugg down, just as I'm doing to you right now.
- supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1I dont see a prostate, so I dont think my head is in my ass. I just surfed the web a bit and asked my chinese friends. Here is the best I have come up with:
In Urban centers, around 10% speak English. In Rural areas 0% speak english, and of those who speak Mandarin or Cantonese at least 20% cannot read or write Chinese (illiterate)
Perhaps I am wrong, of the Chinese on the planet more live in rural areas, so maybe the number is around 97-98% of Chinese cannot speak english.
Apparently in major tourist areas, most people in positions of dealing with tourists have SOME basic cave-man like understanding of English, but not enough to have a conversation with you about anything other than the product they are selling, and a selected few speak English fine. Those who speak fluent English are often employed as translators for business meetings and such.
So before you tell someone to take their head out of their ass, why not look to your left. Yeah, that's your prostate gland. Check to see if it's enlarged, if so go to the doctor.
The most common language on the planet? Chinese. - pseudononymist, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Future entry on slashdot: "Digg suffers own effect"
- pseudononymist, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1innaccurate: cnn is not blocked, and neither are search engines. Flickr just came back online recently as well. Those of us who live here prefer to think of the Great Firewall as a psychotic Net Nanny who forgets to take her meds once in a while, as some of these sites are opened and closed and opened again every few weeks.
- supermanred, on 10/29/2007, -0/+1Many of them do have internet connections, actually. And in regards to those in the city, not many of them speak fluent English, or can read english well enough to web surf in english. It is arrogant to think that Chinese walk around Beijing speaking in English all day long.
VIsit China with that attitude, and you will quickly find yourself in a foreign land where you cant speak a word or understand one. - PandaBearShenyu, on 03/29/2009, -0/+1No ***** sherlock, you expect a Chinese website to link to a site that's in English? When was the last time you searched on google with a foreign language?
- DestroyFascism, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1Can you speaka da Chinee? I didn't think so..
- supermanred, on 10/30/2007, -0/+1The Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) Ethnologue Survey (1999) lists the following as the top languages by population:
(number of native speakers in parentheses)
Chinese* (937,132,000)
Spanish (332,000,000)
English (322,000,000)
Bengali (189,000,000)
Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000)
Arabic* (174,950,000)
Portuguese (170,000,000)
Russian (170,000,000)
Japanese (125,000,000)
German (98,000,000)
French* (79,572,000) -
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