THE dominant role of English on the Internet is being challenged by a UK organisation that maintains British website addresses. The move is intended to reflect the country's multi-cultural mix, The Guardian reported, on June 21.
Internet browsers can already read text that is written in languages from across the globe. However, until now, the actual website address has always been written in the 26-letter Latin alphabet, in addition to hyphens, and the digits 0 to 9.
But, Nominet, a not-for-profit company that registers Internet addresses ending in .uk, is now considering using the international domain names (IDN) standard. Nominet has 4.1m registered domain names under the .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .plc.uk, .ltd.uk and .net.uk signs.
Using IDN would clear the way for the use of websites with addresses with letters that have a mark above them, as in www.café.co.uk, or that use different alphabets such as Greek or Arabic.
Several countries have already made such changes to their domestic addresses. But, the UK plans could go much further than merely adapting website addresses to include the oddities of "native" languages.
"We are asking everyone in the UK what they want," commented Nominet's head of regulation Edward Phillips. "We have Welsh and Gaelic, which require some additional characters. But, when you start looking across the country you realise there is a huge range of languages spoken here. Should we open it up to absolutely everyone's language?
"When we consider how multicultural the UK is, just saying that we are going to stick with the Latin alphabet is not really a fair way to go about it."
Professor Susan Bassnett, of the University of Warwick, is an expert on intercultural studies. She believes that using other languages in British website addresses is part of a growing awareness: people in the UK can consider themselves to be both British and a member of a separate ethnic background.
"People in the UK are much more conscious of their ethnic identities and have a desire to inhabit more than just one world," Bassnett said.
This could also mean a significant weakening of the Anglo-Saxon dominance of the world wide web. English is the dominant online language because the Internet was created by English-speaking scientists and because American online business is strong. But, in fact, the majority of the world's people do not speak the language.
Interestingly, the introduction of new characters and new languages into very common British website addresses could actually have a positive influence on the UK's native English speakers, Bassnett commented. It could send the message that English is not, after all, the only language in the world.
"As English increases its power and more people learn it, native English speakers have become less and less interested in learning another language," she said. "So, this [address change] could have a very positive influence on that trend."
There are roughly 300 languages spoken in the UK, according to UK's Department for Education and Skills. So, opening up the Internet to different languages in addresses would allow language-based community groups to have their own sites on the Internet.
But, if there is a demand, any ethnic community in the UK 梖rom the Chinese to the Greeks to Russians and Indians ?could have .uk websites with addresses in their own languages. The switch would not mean a heavy investment. That's because international domain names don't change the underlying registration system. IDN involves an upgrade to the internet browser on a user's computer, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. That allows it to recognise website names written in a full range of symbols.
