"450 Million People, 25 Countries ": Which darn language to use ?

[fischermx]

I received a newsletter today announcing the upcoming registration of .EU domains.
One thing that I've not seen discussed is that eventhough, yes, there are 450 million people there, and yes, there are about 25 countries there, there is a huge mix of spoken languages there.
Which is the language you should use to register your domains .eu ?
English ? French ?
I don't think the .eu domains are gonna make a big hit.
That case I'm more in favor of IDNs, specially for Asian countries.

 

[droplister]

if your ambitious, go for em all, Ive been registering just english, but if a word was available for prereg in spanish, english, french, and german, Id go for em

 

[fischermx]

How true is you must have an address in europe ? Is that enforced ?
Which registrar could you recommend to register .eu ?

 

[EM @MAJ.com]

How true is you must have an address in europe ? Is that enforced ?
Which registrar could you recommend to register .eu ?

same question , aside enom

 

[none]

Language | Proportion of EU population speaking it as a mother tongue | as a language other than mother tongue | Total proportion

English | 13% | 34% | 47%
German | 18% | 12% | 30%
French | 12% | 11% | 23%
Italian | 13% | 2% | 15%
Spanish | 9% | 5% | 14%
Polish | 9% | 1% | 10%
Dutch | 5% | 1% | 6%
Russian | 1% | 5% | 6%
Swedish | 2% | 1% | 3%
Greek | 2% | 0% | 2%
Portuguese | 2% | 0% | 2%
Danish | 1% | 1% | 2%
Finnish | 1% | 0% | 1%

I personally think .eu is a red herring, but if I were interested, this would be my guide.

 

[denny007]

Only English imho. Other language countries are used to to their country tld - Germans for .de etc.

 

[taboo]

Some people who use browsers like Opera will generate traffic to a .com when not even typing in the extension. So .com's will always have relevancy without regards to ccTLDs.

 

[Zeeble]

I think that German language .eu domains are initially going to have the most value. Germany is probably the country most technologically advanced in Europe and most committed to the EU.

I would always go for English and German as the main languages. Remember that more than 25% of EU citizens speak German as their first language.