Internet to include different alphabets

People could soon be able use different alphabets to access websites. One of the biggest shake-ups to the internet is expected to be announced on Friday. It will mean characters written in scripts – like Arabic or Cyrillic – can go into the address bar. This change to domain names could make internet access easier million of people.

The President of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Rod Beckstrom said:
“This is another very exciting change. It’s more incremental perhaps, but a big change in the domain name field. It’s the single biggest change in 10 or 15 years”.

However, some people are worried that this will cause confusion. These were the feelings of one internet user in Korea:
“If Korean is used for international communication, foreigners won’t be able to understand or read it well enough. This could cause problems” said one Korean internet user.

Among alphabets likely to be included are Greek, Hindi and Japanese. Good news for the 1.6 billion internet users around the world, many of whose languages do not use Latin characters.

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tags: Culture, Internet, Technology