Findings from Paris-based web intelligence firm Semiocast has shown Japanese and Malay to be the most prominent Asian languages used to communicate on Twitter.
The research ranks English top (representing 50% of all messages) while Portuguese and Spanish also feature near the top of 41 languages found on Twitter between 8 and 10 February 2010 - the period analysed.
A graph from the report is below as is analysis from Semiocast.
Japanese
Japanese is the clear second with 14% of messages. This figure proves Twitter's continuous popularity in Japan and confirms Japan has been the first milestone of Twitter's international development.
Japanese pips Indonesian despite the fact that statistics from Sysomos earlier this year showed Indonesia to be Asia capital of Twitter (see here).
However, this can put down to most users in Japan tweeting in Japanese whereas many Indonesians tweet in English and/or Indonesian, thus the number of tweets sent in Indonesia does not equal to the number tweets in Indonesian.
Malay
Indonesian itself is not included in its own right, instead the research combines the Bahasa languages in Malaysia and Indonesia, with the two languages together ranking as the fourth most used language on Twitter, accounting for than one in twenty tweets (6%) globally.
Semiocast estimates that "every day about 3 million messages are exchanged in Malay-related languages."
The rapid adoption of Twitter in Malaysia and Indonesia, where Twitter concluded partnerships with two mobile careers, shows in their rankings.
Thai, the rest and the rise of non-English languages
Semiocast kindly provided the following breakdown of other Asian languages.
Korean - 0.97% of tweets
Chinese - 0.65% [Simplified Chinese - 0.37%, Traditional Chinese - 0.28%]
Vietnamese - 0.36%
Thai - 0.35%
It is no surprise to see Thai at less than 1% given that the language is barely spoken outside of Thailand.
What is of interest is just how low Thai scores, it is beaten by Chinese; though Twitter is blocked in China, the country's large expatriate communities are likely a reason for this.
The general results showed an increase in non-English languages as Twitter continues to be adopted across the world, while Semiocast noted that many in non-English speaking countries, like Thailand, will tweet in English in addition to/instead of their native tongue.
English is still the most used language on Twitter, with 50% of messages, reflecting its high penetration rate in English-speaking countries and the tendency of Twitter users that are non-native .
Semiocast expects non-English languages to grow as Twitter continues to be adopted across the world.
[These results are] nonetheless a sharp decline from the two-third share English was representing in the first half of 2009.
In the near future, English's share should drop even further as the strongest growth for Twitter is expected to come from non-English speaking countries.
Thai, along with Chinese (were Twitter is banned), Vietnamese, Korean, Hindi, Nepal, Tamil and other non-Asian languages, form part of a 17% chunk that is other languages.
However...
It is important to bear in mind that with just a three day window for analysis there is no guarantee that these statistics are wholly representative of Twitter.
For example, some users tweet more/less during weekends, just the period assessed did not include weekends which is likely to affect the balance of the results.
Nevertheless the findings are interesting.
A PDF of the report can be downloaded on the Semiocast website here.
