Geek Tested:

Internet Gearing for Non-English URLs

Posted 10/26/09 at 05:00:52 PM by Bart Salisbury

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the prevailing lords of Internet naming, have decided it’s time make the web a little less English-centric. It is expected that during it’s meeting in Seoul, ICANN will allow Internet addresses to be in non-Latin scripts. This would permit addresses in languages such as Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Greek, Korean, and Cyrillic.

The Internet presently has 1.6 billion users worldwide, with more than half using languages based on alphabets not using Latin characters. “This is the biggest change technically to the Internet since it was invented 40 years ago," Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the ICANN board, told reporters, calling it a "fantastically complicated technical feature."

The change is expected to be approved Friday, after which ICANN would start accepting applications for non-English domain names. The first such names would appear in the system mid-2010, along with a translation system which allows the different scripts to be converted to the right address.

Image Credit: ICANN

COMMENTS:3

TAGS:

COMMENTS

Nani?
Submitted by Branden_Stone on Tue, 10/27/2009 - 9:35am

There are many things that we use today that we take credit for.
However, the origins of many technologies would astonish people. Yes, the internet was
invented in the United States, but the majority of people in the world don't use
English. They shouldn't have to use it to start with. Also, it has
absolutely nothing to do with English. We'd still be using the old Anglo-Saxon
based alphabet if the Latin-based alphabet wasn’t introduced by foreign
influence. We'd also probably still be using Roman Numerals if Arabic
Numerals weren't introduced by foreign influence.

Login or register to post comments

American Invented Leave it Alone W.W.W. my Ass. It's just a Name
Submitted by RAMBO on Tue, 10/27/2009 - 12:38am

America invented and built the Internet! If the rest of the world wants to use it, than learn

to read and write English, enough of this political correctness Bullshit!

It's long over due for American's to stand strong and tell the World no, they cannot have it

their way when it is a orignal American thing and they want to alter things..

The real point here, is that by doing and supporting ICANN will lead to a

vast redirection of content to non U.S. URLs; think we have serious problems

with our security issues, just wait! I say ICANNOT; allow this!!! This URL stuff is just a smoke screen...

Want URLs in your own language's, then bulid your own Internet. America companies stop selling out our way of life!

But my real point is, American's tell ICANN to go screw themself's big time!!! USA USA USA

Login or register to post comments