Non-Latin domain names

[Randy Alexander]

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/181094/icann_approves_domain_names_we_cant_type.html

I know everyone is seeing this in the news now, and there will be lots
of blog posts about it, but I thought it might be a good idea to start
some discussion on it here.

I suppose the article above represents a range of some of the
sentiments that will become popular in the months to come.  I was
struck by a few points:

"the U.S. has given away whatever advantage it offers
English-speakers." -- I'm not sure why the US should have any such
advantage.  There may be a fear that English will suffer a decline,
but I doubt it.  I have a more optimistic outlook that this will give
more English speakers reason to study some other languages.

"Practically, I am not looking forward to perhaps someday having to
learn how to type potentially 100,000 non-Latin characters that ICANN
has embraced. Is there an easy way to do this? How many keys will
keyboards need to have?"  -- To me, the fact that the reporter (I'm
guessing that reporters are representative of a slightly-above-average
intelligence) has this kind of idea is much scarier than any of the
worries he puts forward.  Users of most modern languages use the same
keyboard to type.  Sigh.

"I am guessing this is a problem Google will help solve"  -- I guess
people really do think Google is God.

China uses non-latin characters in URLs (not in the domain names, but
after the slash).  On non-Chinese operating systems, they display as
percent signs followed by hex codes.  I wonder if the new domain names
will be similar.

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
Blogs:
Manchu studies: http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
Chinese characters: http://www.bjshengr.com/yuwen

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