Since its inception, the Internet's domain-name system has made a point to accommodate only English-language characters. That provision has helped streamline the engineering of the Web, but according to delegates at a recent United Nations summit, it has left speakers of Russian, Arabic, Lao and the like out in the cold.
At the meeting, held in Athens, speakers argued that the Web's apparent love of English has marginalized many surfers in developing nations. "I think the digital divide is not as important as the linguistic divide," said Adama Samassékou, president of the African Academy of Languages, according to CNET.
Help for non-English speakers may be on the way: Although it took years of work, Web browsers including Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer now support characters from other languages. –Brock Read
