ICANN Approves .IRAN (in Non-Latin)

penciling_in writes "CircleID reports that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has announced its approval of non-Latin string evaluation of 'Iran.' This approval will allow the availability of Iran's top-level domain in its own native language, Persian, also known as Farsi (that is, the domain name .IRAN, in non-Latin characters). According to ICANN, there are currently 33 requests for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs), representing 22 languages, out of which 18 countries/territories have so far been approved."

Comments

Show me the TLD

[mad_ian]

So... what does this look like? I think a lot of us are using OSs that show us Unicode and non-Latin characters, so lets see it.

non-latin names and whois

[MavEtJu]

Who has any clarity / clue on how whois gets implemented for these domains?

Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[mykos]

My main concern is just about where we're going as a human race. I mean, nobody really thinks of aliens speaking separate languages when you read sci-fi.

I like to think that most people would agree that a single language would be one less roadblock in an advanced society. Not trying to westernize anyone...hell, I'd even accept Chinese dialects since they're the most spoken already.

Re:What injustice!

[peppepz]

While you're at it, you can demand that domain in Shavian. It's a script that is native to English and it's already in Unicode; so you can stop using those foreign roman letters with inconsistent pronunciation.

Re:ICANN: Tower of Babel for the modern day?

[squiggleslash]

Yes and know. Languages also converge given the right circumstances. That's what's terrifying some French culturalists, for example: when English words started to creep into generic French some decades ago, there was a pushback by those worried that ultimately the French language would become diluted, and ultimately redundant. Laws were passed to protect the French language.

It's hard to believe now, but in Britain as recently as fifty years ago, people in many parts of the country couldn't understand the dialects used in others, and vice versa. As mass audio mediums, from TV and radio to pre-recorded audio, have spread, dialects have slowly merged together. In the mean time, in non-English speaking countries, the prolific audio cultural output of the English speaking world, in particular the US, has meant that many have effectively gone bi-lingual, especially throughout Europe.

I don't think a common language will happen overnight, but I think that unless somehow the English speaking world's movie, TV, and music producing machine somehow loses its dominance, a huge portion of the world will be English speaking by the end of the Century, if not earlier. There will be push-back, as we've seen in France, but it'll happen, because an increasing number of the voices people want to hear will be English-speaking.