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May 3, 2005

I Think He's Gonna Have to Swim Back - 2 Million Downloads - Mostly in English and German

It's Press Release time again here on Opera Blogs, where we peruse the best chum the Opera marketing department has to offer.

Opera 8's hit 2 Million downloads, which means Tetchy, worn out from answering questions from idiots, is gonna have to swim back from the US to Norway, this time stopping at a pub for a pint and some chips.

What's interesting is that they announced the breakdown of the various language versions downloaded of Opera 8. Apparently the large majority are still English users, but the German version took up about a fifth of the total 2 Million at about 400,000. Interesting in light of my comments on the Linguistic Makeup of Opera Users. German is really a kind of lingua franca (that's me, cracking up) in many parts of Europe if I'm not wrong?

Reminds me of Apple and their glee over their music store, but instead of Steve Jobs, we have Tetchy, and instead of Keynote, we have OperaShow. At least Tetchy doesn't wear those fucking annoying turtlenecks.

Posted by subtitles at May 3, 2005 11:10 AM | Opera Boggling

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Comments

I wouldn't go as far as saying that German is a lingua franca in Europe, no; my guess is that (UK) English will get you further here, with Russian and Turkish following it.

Posted by: Serge K. Keller at May 3, 2005 9:06 PM

Well, he said many parts.. and really, there are more German speakers in Europe than Turkish speakers (population of Germany being roughly equal to Turkey - assuming all of Turkey is counted as part of Europe; I'm sure some EU leaders will have fits answering this). German is also spoken by Austrians, most people in Switzerland, a lot of French Alsatians, Italians from South Tyrol.. and there's even a German language community in Belgium.

Posted by: Michel [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 4, 2005 12:24 AM

lingua franca simply means a medium of communication between people of different languages - a common language. I think Turkey, if joined the EU, is supposed to end up being the most populous nation, though, as I said, I get the feeling many places speak German, though as I also said, that might be a bit mistaken. I just remember dealing with people from the northern portions of Europe as well as eastern europe whose second language is german - though why that would mean they have German versions of Opera.

Posted by: subtitles [TypeKey Profile Page] at May 4, 2005 6:10 AM