Web Addresses to Include Chinese and Arabic Characters

THE ARTICLE USES THE WORDS "WILL ALLOW ENTIRE WEB ADDRESSES TO BE WRITTEN IN NON-LATIN WEB ADDRESSES".

Isn't this already being done? Don't other nations already have internet access in their own languages? If you don't think so, try reading or accessing chinese or arabic or hebrew or russian or other websites, without knowing these languages; there may be english language duplicates to some of these sites, but, one wonders, is this "announcement" a hoax, or, is the intended internet transformation just not adequately or accurately explained?

One hopes for example that this is not a UN motivated attempt to supercede and usurp the technological advances of the western nations, which are the prime movers in the development of the internet.

If there is a "geek" out there, who can make sense of this announcement and make sense of it for the rest of us, please, do so ASAP!

As for making the internet accessible to those, who have no access, this issue raises first some skepticism in that any nation can already develop internet software in any language; solving issue may more likely go to matters of illiteracy and poverty of indigenous populations. Some populations may not even have their own written languages!

I have to laugh at all of the idiots who are so concerned about this. Who cares? If you see an email with a bunch of characters you don't understand, just delete it like you do with the sex and Viagra ads. Come on, do you think the entire world speaks English and uses the Latin alphabet? So if they want an email address in their own language, I could care less. If I don't want to open it, I can delete it or filter it out. And what would this have to do with someone hating America? Since Latin characters are used in German, French, Spanish, Italian, etc, etc. I guess they must hate half of the world. Go crawl back into your isolated holes.

People are so swift on here are they? Hello, it's not going to make the internet more difficult for english speakers. It's going to make it easier for people who don't speak English. The only change is that they will be able to create domain names, etc in their own script instead of the current standard. I doubt any of you speak a second language and search for pages in Arabic of Chinese so it's not going to change anything for you. However, for people that actually speak other languages they will be able to do searches in thier own script and create web pages including their domain names in their own script.

As a couple of the posters have already pointed out, languages and alphabets in all varieties are already on the 'Net! I've seen Asian languages and Russian and Serbian, etc. (all in different alphabets, of course) just in the course of scanning the 'net. Also, of course, on Face Book. So, what's the big deal? And, of course, lots of spam coming in from Russia and the Ukraine, usually involving sex (but I wouldn't know - my spam filter just filters that crap out!).

I like what one poster said: Namely, when some of the world's most important languages (behind English, of course) include Russian, Arabic 7 Chinese, our schools "continue to spoon Spanish & French" instead. Absolutely spot-on! And we still aren't teaching those languages beyond only a handful of very advanced students in senior high school. Factoid: More Chinese speak English as a second language than do Americans as their first/native language!!

wow. most of you are complete idiots and dont even know what youre talking about. you have no idea what this article is even about! you have the nerve to complain about other languages but have zero reading comprehension of your own!

as the headline clearly states, this article is about "web addresses." it has nothing to do with what language a website has on its pages or what language emails are written in. it has to do with the ".com" name.

for example, instead of a chinese speaker having to know to go to "chinese.com" they can go to a site called "中文.com" or "中文.商业" or whatever. why should they have to know that it's called "chinese" in english to go to it? did you know how to write "中文"?

the only problem i see for this is that site owners will now have to buy their .com name in many languages. in my example the owner of chinese.com would probably want to have 中文.商业 direct to his site too. but this is good for icann because they will make more money in per-domain fees. you didnt think they really made this change "for the people" did u?