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First Non-Latin TLDs Go Online Today

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the is-klingon-in-there dept.

eldavojohn writes "ICANN today switched on the country code top level domains for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, which are the first non-Latin TLDs available and are also fully readable right to left. Slashdot does not support them but you can find the TLDs in the BBC article. ICANN said it had 21 more requests for TLDs in 11 different languages. A quick note — if you do not have the language packs installed, you may experience unpredictable browser behavior in the URL bar. Right now countries like China and Thailand have implemented workarounds to achieve the same effect."

5 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Fragmenting and such... by Unka+Willbur · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ridiculous tribalism, that's all it is. Fragmentation of the Internet to appease some regressive, regional e-peenery is the stupidest idea to date. I speak 8 languages and love some, like Russian immensely, but the internet is a nation with its own language, and that language is Standard English. I call shenanigans on anything else being shoehorned into its basic infrastructure!

    --
    "Remember when I said I would never lie? Well, that was the first time."
    1. Re:Fragmenting and such... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      When the 7 Billion people around the globe will be speaking Standard English, then you may have a point. Until then I think it is everybody's right to use his/her native/preferred language on the Internet, including in TLDs. I speak 5 languages and Arabic is my native language and I think that today is a great day for the Internet.

    2. Re:Fragmenting and such... by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ridiculous tribalism, that's all it is.

      Well, then as the submitter, I regret tagging it with "culture."

      I speak 8 languages and love some, like Russian immensely, but the internet is a nation with its own language, and that language is Standard English. I call shenanigans on anything else being shoehorned into its basic infrastructure!

      Huh, as a developer I had always assumed that we wrote software to help people. Not that people changed their behaviors and customs to be able to use our software. I guess I was wrong. I find it disturbing that a polyglot like yourself can so easily dismiss an engineering challenge as "ridiculous" and "shenanigans" because all it takes to get around it is for everyone in the world to learn my language of takes.

      I find it humorous that we sit here and rail for interoperability and satisfying the consumer and no DRM and open standards ... only to turn around and call something that opens up the internet to the rest of the world "ridiculous."

      If this is the consensus among geeks, what a shame it is to be a geek.

      Where do you stand on the effort that went into the Linux language packs? Were those ridiculous tribalism as well when someone took the time to make them?

      --
      My work here is dung.
  2. This is just like .xxx by drumcat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Guess what -- this will all get blocked. More fragmentation = less free internet. Here comes Sharia law that says all internet usage must be in Farsi, and all websites with latin endings will be blocked. Weak.

  3. you're not thinking the issue through by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    currently people are not getting on the internet because its all in english: it serves as a barrier and they see no reason to even try

    but when the internet supports their native language, they get on the internet, get a taste of it, like it, want to use more it, and inevitably this drives them to the english web, since there's more of whatever they're looking for over there

    in other words, the long term effect of supporting other languages on the web is paradoxically further and faster consolidation to english

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it