WILL ENGLISH ALWAYS BE THE MAIN INTERNET LANGUAGE? The Internet’s ability to connect a wide range of cultures encourages variety. However, for the time being, English dominates online because from the start it was the lingua franca of cyberspace. Will this always be the case? Currently about 70% of Internet is in English, but only about 44% of Internet users are native English speakers. Worldwide, native Spanish speakers outnumber native speakers of English online, and the number of native Chinese speakers is greater than both those groups put together. Statistics show that the situation is changing. For instance, three years ago 75% of web pages were in English, but that number has dropped to 50% today. Furthermore, Internet use among non-native speakers of English is growing at a faster rate than that of native English speakers. By 2003, the number of native English-speaking web users will have dropped to 29%, according to one estimate. As a result, some researchers say that the early predominance of English is going to decline. They say that English will keep a special role in connecting communities whose native languages are different, but in about 20 years’ time, Spanish, French, Arabic and Chinese will also have taken on this connecting role. If this is true, then monolingual native English speakers may be more likely to learn another language and also become bilingual, or even multilingual. 1. English became the dominant Internet language because {}.