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ARMENIAN ALPHABET COULD GO WWW
EurasiaNet.org
July 15 2014
July 15, 2014 - 10:26am, by Giorgi Lomsadze
URLs may soon be available in the 1,600--year-old Armenian alphabet,
as Armenia, the small Caucasus country with a booming IT sector,
moves to claim its spot in the Internet namescape.
Early this year, Armenia applied for a permit to register domain
names in its ancient, native tongue. One in-the-know NGO, the Internet
Society of Armenia, says it expects the US-based international domain
regulator to approve the Armenian alphabet as a URL language.
Currently, website addresses in Armenia, and the rest of the South
Caucasus, use the Latin alphabet.
URLs began quickly diversifying away from English, after the Los
Angeles-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
began accepting applications for domains in non-Latin scripts in 2010.
English still dominates, though, followed by large-population languages
like Chinese and Russian.
Armenia's domain claim comes amidst a surprise surge in its information
technology industry. The country, once better known in foreign markets
for its brandy, is allegedly seeing the sector grow by an average
of 22 percent annually, according to official data, EurasiaNet.org
has reported.
Most recently, the Santa Monica, California-based tech-holding
company Science Inc. snapped up Yerevan's InLight, a mobile-app maker,
TechCrunch wrote.
Arguably, using the Armenian alphabet for domain names could impact
such outside interest, but Internet Society of Armenia Deputy Director
Grigori Saghian admits that the push to make the Mesrobian (named
after alphabet creator Mesrop Mashots) script an online address
language is a move more patriotic than practical.
"The domains in Mesropian letters can . . . cause [the] isolation of .
. . Armenian sites," but it is also "inevitable" and "necessary,"
Armenpress reported Saghian as saying.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/69021
From: A. Papazian
EurasiaNet.org
July 15 2014
July 15, 2014 - 10:26am, by Giorgi Lomsadze
URLs may soon be available in the 1,600--year-old Armenian alphabet,
as Armenia, the small Caucasus country with a booming IT sector,
moves to claim its spot in the Internet namescape.
Early this year, Armenia applied for a permit to register domain
names in its ancient, native tongue. One in-the-know NGO, the Internet
Society of Armenia, says it expects the US-based international domain
regulator to approve the Armenian alphabet as a URL language.
Currently, website addresses in Armenia, and the rest of the South
Caucasus, use the Latin alphabet.
URLs began quickly diversifying away from English, after the Los
Angeles-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
began accepting applications for domains in non-Latin scripts in 2010.
English still dominates, though, followed by large-population languages
like Chinese and Russian.
Armenia's domain claim comes amidst a surprise surge in its information
technology industry. The country, once better known in foreign markets
for its brandy, is allegedly seeing the sector grow by an average
of 22 percent annually, according to official data, EurasiaNet.org
has reported.
Most recently, the Santa Monica, California-based tech-holding
company Science Inc. snapped up Yerevan's InLight, a mobile-app maker,
TechCrunch wrote.
Arguably, using the Armenian alphabet for domain names could impact
such outside interest, but Internet Society of Armenia Deputy Director
Grigori Saghian admits that the push to make the Mesrobian (named
after alphabet creator Mesrop Mashots) script an online address
language is a move more patriotic than practical.
"The domains in Mesropian letters can . . . cause [the] isolation of .
. . Armenian sites," but it is also "inevitable" and "necessary,"
Armenpress reported Saghian as saying.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/69021
From: A. Papazian