I-CANN approves non-Latin script

A regulatory organization has approved the use of Chinese, Hindi, Korean and other scripts not based on the Latin alphabet, for web addresses. He Mingzhi breaks down the lingo for us.

The I-CANN board voted to allow the use of the scripts in domain names at the conclusion of a week-long meeting in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

Internet users could start seeing them in use early next year, particularly in Chinese, Arabic, and other scripts in which demand has been among the highest.

Rod Beckstrom, ICANN president & chief executive, said, "This represents a day one small step for ICANN and the IATF, but it represents a very important and significant step for half of the world of Internet users,those who use non-Latin scripts in their own language. This helps us to live up to our shared goals of one world, one Internet, everyone connected, now in people's own scripts."

Since their creation in the 1980s, domain names have been limited to the 26 characters in the Latin alphabet used in English, as well as 10 numerals and the hyphen.

This is inconvenient for Internet users with little or no knowledge of English.

Now, ICANN is allowing those same technical tricks to apply to additional suffixes as well, which makes the Internet truly multilingual.