What language do you prefer?

[NameAlot.com]

(((SORRY WRONG SECTION: MOD, CAN YOU PLEASE MOVE TO INDIAN IDN SECTION THANKS)))):

Ok, Here are the facts about India's languages (source:answers.com)

English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language

The bulk of my Indian IDNs come from Hindi, Urdu, and Bengali. There are still a few gems left in the latter two which I think are very keystone to the language. The problem with the registering Indian words is that there is not strong information or translations from them to English available on the web- so it is speculation at its best if it's not native to you. Which language do you use or have you been avoiding Indian IDNs?

[Rubber Duck]

In order of importance in my portfolio, something like:

Hindi
Urdu
Bangla
Kannada
Punjabi
Gujarati
Telugu
Tamil
Marathi
Malayalam
Oriya

[italiandragon]

I think Indian web users use English basing also on Alexa`s top Indian websites

[Rubber Duck]

Yes, but that is based on a very small proportion of the population actually being online to date and with English to date being the only sensible option. Things are moving very quickly don't be fooled by Alexa, which probably doesn't even collate sensible data for India. Don't forget only users using the Alexa Toolbar actually get polled!

[daddypi]

The only ones that I've "dabbled" in, are:

Hindi
Urdu
Punjabi
Tamil

[drbiohealth]

Well, this should give you an idea on the trend ..

http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/mar/22spec1.htm

Says Krishna Prasad, head programming, MSN India: "Eighty per cent of the literate in India do not understand English, so moving into regional languages is inevitable."

[taboo]

Do any of you guys know about getting a indonesian business liscense which is needed to register .co.id - I would be interested in paying anyone that already has one to get a domain to me. Right now looking at paying $200 for reg fee and $350 for the registrar to use their liscense. Somebody have a cheaper solution? Also how many IDN's do you see for hindu, since most of thier words use the english character set correct?

[drbiohealth]

?? Not clear!

Originally Posted by taboo

Also how many IDN's do you see for hindu, since most of thier words use the english character set correct?

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by Trentino

(((SORRY WRONG SECTION: MOD, CAN YOU PLEASE MOVE TO INDIAN IDN SECTION THANKS)))):

Ok, Here are the facts about India's languages (source:answers.com)

Answers isn't a source of anything as it is a mirror site of Wikipedia.org!

[NameSniper.com]

Correct,answers.com is a mirror of WIkipedia.org

[wrdekle]

Originally Posted by taboo

Do any of you guys know about getting a indonesian business liscense which is needed to register .co.id - I would be interested in paying anyone that already has one to get a domain to me. Right now looking at paying $200 for reg fee and $350 for the registrar to use their liscense. Somebody have a cheaper solution? Also how many IDN's do you see for hindu, since most of thier words use the english character set correct?

Dude I believe IDN will pretty much miss malaysia, phillipines, and indonesia as bahasa, malaysian, and tagalog (all related languages) use ASCII. If not, I'd appreciate a correction pronto. If you are just interested in just the ASCII domains with co.id extension then please disregard.

As for Hindi - they use a script form devanagari descended from sanskrit. Though english is widely spoken, it is not the language of the masses.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by wrdekle

Dude I believe IDN will pretty much miss malaysia, phillipines, and indonesia as bahasa, malaysian, and tagalog (all related languages) use ASCII. If not, I'd appreciate a correction pronto. If you are just interested in just the ASCII domains with co.id extension then please disregard.

As for Hindi - they use a script form devanagari descended from sanskrit. Though english is widely spoken, it is not the language of the masses.

That has been very much my assessment to date, but with Vietnamese a lot of IDN have been registered because although it is essentially Latin based now, it still uses a lot of accents. Jury is still out whether those accents will be used extensively in Domain Names or not. I think the tide is now actually moving in favour of IDN, but you should be aware of the risk that ASCII may still predominate in such langauages.

When it comes to Chinse and Japanese the scenario is quite different. Romanji and Pinyin will turn as sour as last weeks milk. The same is also undoubtedly true for transliterations of Russian, Hindi and Arabic.