Why chose a language when registering?

[Pete]

Hello,

Is there a reason why you need to associate a language when registering an IDN at a registrar?

For instance, fermé (closed) can be registered as french, spanish, etc, and even english, even though it's not an english word. Once it's registered, the word can't be registered in another language, so maybe it serves a different purpose? And how would you change that language designation if you made a mistake?

Assigning the right language to a web page is done through HMTL metas, so I guess it's not for that.

Any clue will be appreciated!

tx

[Alphamale]

What a great question.

No idea, maybe the language tag is a hang up from the olden days when it used to do something.

I'm sure someone will come along with a history lesson as to why? But all I know is that it doesn't do anything, in other words forget about it, it doesn't do jack.

[Rubber Duck]

There is a purpose to the language tag. It effectively allows some additional restrictions to be added and I believe is used to prevent the registering of mixed script domains. Not all Latin phishing domains are technically mixed script though.

The tag is not retained after the domain is registered, so once it is registered the tag is irrelevant as I understand it.

[Pete]

I hope it's just legacy.
Some of what I registered mistakenly has english as the designated language, but they are spanish of french words. I just hope they eventually don't get restricted or somehow invalidated because of the mismatch.
It's pretty unlikely though.

P

[Rubber Duck]

I will give you the short version here as I lost my previous more lengthy post due to ongoing conflict between this site and IE7.

In brief you are not allowed to mix Latin and Cyrillic. Language Tags are used to run the check. You cannot register Cyrillic characters under an English Tag or Latin characters under a Russian Tag. Latin is permissible under a Japanese Tag.

The registered domain has no Tag, so is as valid as any other until ICANN changes the rules.

[Pete]

Tanx for the info.

p.

[bwhhisc]

Originally Posted by Pete

I hope it's just legacy.
Some of what I registered mistakenly has english as the designated language, but they are spanish of french words. I just hope they eventually don't get restricted or somehow invalidated because of the mismatch.
It's pretty unlikely though.
P

I will bet there probably 100,000 idns with "Afrikaans" idn tags registered because many
never designated a choice and that is the default being first language in line. I agree with Dave
that once registered, you have purchased the punycode and corresponding unicode.

[Rubber Duck]

Originally Posted by bwhhisc

I will bet there probably 100,000 idns with "Afrikaans" idn tags registered because many
never designated a choice and that is the default being first language in line. I agree with Dave
that once registered, you have purchased the punycode and corresponding unicode.

We have all done that but it makes no difference. The registrations were accepted and the Tag was not retained.