subject: Will Cyrillic Domain Names Make A Difference To Slavic Users? [print this page] Registering of Cyrillic domain names has begun. This establishes a national domain for the first time in the history of the Internet and Russia, which has the distinction and approval which uses the national alphabet which can be used for all further registered names.
The establishment of a national domain name with the use of Cyrillic symbols is unprecedented in the history of the Internet network. Russia is the first country in the world where the use of a national alphabet has been approved. This establishes the domain extension web.
These names are here to stay and could establish themselves, plus enabling the use of the alphabet and bringing more users to the web. This in contrast with many users being restricted to the use of English which is the dominant language used on the web.
The alphabet is a script writing system that was developed in Bulgaria in the 9th century and has been in wide use in most Slavic national languages. It is also the third official alphabet of the European Union after the Latin and Greek alphabets. Most computer keyboards allow only the Latin alphabet with a few other characters, but software like Word does allow the use of this and other alphabets. With the advent of Cyrillic names, the time may not be far away, when key board manufacturers produce keyboard which would allow a switch to this alphabet or even keyboards which combines both the existing Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. This would allow people to type in their web address without much of trouble.
Russian registries are now making it a priority to register names for government organizations.These are free of charge and other bodies that wish to use it would have to pay for them.
It is expected that this will greatly ease the user experience on the Internet for Russian and Slavic language users. It is hoped that the use of these domains will greatly extend the use of the Internet in Russia and allow their influence to be felt on the web.
There is however contrarian views that this will isolate Russia from the rest of the world. They feel that the present use of Latin characters and English has led to Russians integrating with the rest of the world. It is also felt that Cyrillic domain names and the use of the Cyrillic alphabet could result in their being unable to communicate easily with the rest of the world, as they do at present.
