By Guy Faulconbridge
The Kremlin is concerned that Russian, once the main
language throughout the Soviet Union, is losing ground to local
languages and to the creeping influence of English. It sees
defending Russian as a matter of national pride.
He said 300 million people worldwide used Russian media and
that a Cyrillic domain name would be a key part of raising the
importance of Russian as a language, a task he said was his
personal priority as president.
"It is a symbol of the importance of the Russian language
and Cyrillic and it is not a bad sphere of cooperation. And I
think we have a rather high chance of achieving such a decision
in the Internet world."
Medvedev has been keen to portray himself as an
Internet-savvy head of state: he has publicly used his mobile
telephone to connect to the Internet and says he surfs online
every morning for news.
Russian Internet sites use domain names in the Latin
script, as in most parts of the Internet. Addresses end either
with the suffix .ru, or in some cases .su, a domain name
inherited from the Soviet Union.
Some in the industry have though raised concerns that it
could allow the state to control more of the content in a
sphere that has remained a relatively free forum for dissent at
a time when traditional media have become subject to tighter
control.
Russian is one of the United Nations' six main languages
and the sixth most widely spoken languages in the world after
Mandarin, English, Hindi/Urdu, Arabic and Spanish.
0 comments:
Post a Comment