non-Latin web addresses go live

non-Latin web addresses go live

The very first countries to take advantage of the non-Latin domain name as soon as ICANN switched it on are the Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and UAE. The aforementioned countries went live with country code domain names written in Arabic scripts on the day it was made possible by ICANN
China with its huge online population was expected to be one of the first to adopt the non-Latin web address but the Arab countries have beating them to it. The switch on of the non-Latin domain names is said to transform the world wide web into a truly world wide web regardless of your language or script unlike how it has been since it was originally created. This move allow web addresses in many scripts including Chinese, Thai and Tamil.

Many of the countries who script are non-Latin based as said to request approval, so far well over 20 countries have requested approval for international domains from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).

This new comes as Nominet, the UK domain naming authority is considering extending the extensions that could be registered within the UK domain name space including two character domain name.

You can comment on this article on this website or you can discuss it at UK webmaster forum or its domain name registration discussion section.

Will Russia get .rf domain extension?

Different interest groups are always calling for a new domain name extension, there has bee an long campaign by pornographers to .xxx , the Welsh for a .cymru , even Cornwall wants its own domain extension. Some of them have succeed, for example .cat for Catalonia region of Spain, .la for Los Angeles in USA.
The latest call for a domain name extension for a specific people or language comes from the new Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, who called for Russia to be assigned .rf domain extension (RF stands for Russian Federation), he does not want the .rf domain extension in English, but in Cyrillic.
Mr Medvedev is promoting Russian as a global language, he argued that 300 Million people worldwide uses Russian language media, having a .rf in Cyrillic will further help in raising the profile of Russian as a language used globally.

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