

فلسطين. top-level domain representing the Occupied Palestinian Territory - matant
http://www.iana.org/reports/2010/falasteen-report-16jul2010.html

======
Cushman
It's interesting that the Arabic TLDs aren't abbreviated the way Latin and
semi-Latin (.рф) country codes are. I wonder if that's reflective of anything
besides that abbreviation of words is not as common in written Arabic.

~~~
talbina
That is correct, there are no abbreviations in the Arabic language.

~~~
hasenj
One thing about abbreviations in Arabic is they will be read as a word, not as
distinct letters. In English, "http" can't be read as a word, you always read
it as "ech-tee-tee-pee". "etc" is not read "etk" but read as "ee-tee-see".
Where as in arabic, "الخ" is read as one word "ilkh" instead of as letters
"alif-lam-kha".

So, to abbreviate words, you have to think hard about how people will read it.
For instance, someone mentioned in another reply "Hamas" and "Fatah". Both
these abbreviations read nicely as other words with related meanings. But, how
would one abbreviate "Filisteen"?

If you choose the first three letters "Filis", well, that reads like "penny"
and is generally used to refer to cheap things - you don't want to use that.

If you use "ft", that would read as "FiTT" فط which just sounds awful in
Arabic. (it's not like "fit", the "t" here is heavy/strong).

Actually, "filisteen" is already bad enough: it sounds like "filis" + "TTeen"
which is "penny" + "dirt" (we used to make fun of this when we were kids).
Though in Palestinian (and the Levant region in general) they pronounce it
"falasteen", not "filisteen".

~~~
chad_oliver
Good points, although I believe "etc" is pronounced etcetera, or ɛtˈsɛtərə in
IPA.

~~~
munificent
It's pronounced "et cetera" because that's what it's an abbreviation of. Most
abbreviations (unlike acronyms) aren't verbalized in their abbreviated form.
You say "versus", not "vs" when you read it.

However, I do often hear Unix hackers say "et-sey" when referring to the
"etc/" directory because precision is important there: the directory is _not_
named "etcetera" so pronouncing it as such would confuse.

------
jlgreco
My impression is that all the major browsers show these links as punycode for
security reasons. What is the point of these then? Is punycode defaulted to
"off" in some countries? Wouldn't that just create two classes of users, one
more vulnerable to phishing than the other?

~~~
Cushman
It looks like if you add Arabic as a language in Chrome, domains aren't
converted. (And actually it will change <http://xn--ggblala6cyf.xn--wgbh1c/>
to ستفتاء.مصر in the address bar.)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Makes sense. If your language isn't Arabic, you may be unable to, for
instance, write the website address down.

------
mkhalil
Cool beans. Glad to see IANA recognizing it. Hopefully the US Gov won't pull
all there funding. </political joke>

~~~
ars
A bigger question is if the two factions (Fatah and Hamas) will fight over
control of this TLD.

~~~
gadders
If the domain is just for the occupied territories, than Gaza (and Hamas) will
get a different domain.

~~~
shmerl
"Occupied territories" aren't a country though. Otherwise the domain should be
related to Egypt or Jordan (whose territories are supposedly "occupied").

~~~
snotrockets
The Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem are not self ruled, no.

The term "occupied" relates to the fact that they are governed by the Israeli
army, and are not self governed by their native inhabitants (the Israeli
settlers unlawfully transferred there do vote for the Israeli parliament, and
hence are self-governing in a way, as the Israeli army is under the authority
of the Israeli government.)

You are missing some of your history lessons: Jordan and Egypt have recsinded
any claims to those territories, instead recognizing the Palestinian people as
the one who should rule those territories (the same was recognized by the
State of Israel in the "Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government
Arrangements" aka Oslo I Accord)

~~~
shmerl
_Jordan and Egypt have recsinded any claims to those territories_

That's exactly my point why those territories aren't occupied. The only way to
call them occupied if Egypt or Jordan would still claim their authority over
them. But as you said - they don't. Therefore while their status isn't clear,
they aren't occupied. I.e. they are not more occupied by "Israeli Civil
Authority", as they are occupied by the "Palestinian Authority" (i.e. Fatah
and Hamas). At least that's how I view it.

Oslo agreements weren't supported by Arabs (de facto), therefore they are
morally void for a long time already. UN might support the idea of "occupied"
terminology, but UN isn't the only entity who defines it.

------
mark_l_watson
Why not? The web is supposed to be open and letting all countries have
whatever TLD(s) they want makes sense.

The fact that some browsers may have font problems, etc. makes me think that
countries might want to also have a secondary TLD in latin text. Perhaps they
could be mapped to the same domain? I would think that a lot of countries
might want this as a local pride issue.

------
taylorfausak
This TLD messes up HN's title: "top-level domain representing the Occupied
Palestinian Territory | Hacker News .فلسطين" I assume this is because Arabic
is right-to-left, but it's interesting that only the title is affected.

Edit: This affects Mobile Safari on an iPad (iOS 5.1.1).

~~~
mratzloff
It appears to be a bug in Safari in general. I see it on 6.0.

------
ars
Will this become a trend and other countries will start registering TLD's in
their native language?

Even if they use latin script, the name of the country is not always written
the same in it's own language vs in English.

~~~
MartinCron
This is already happening. The TLD for Spain is .es

~~~
jtreminio
I don't think it's "es" for "español (Spaniards don't speak Spanish), it's
"es" for "España".

~~~
MartinCron
Yes, I knew it was "España" but I was too lazy to get the special character.

But, um, what _do_ the people in Spain speak if not Spanish?

~~~
tadfisher
There are five co-official languages recognized in the various regions of
Spain: Castellano (everywhere), Aranese (Catalonia), Basque (Basque Country),
Catalan (Catalonia), and Galician (Galicia).

In addition, there are several localized languages, that are not "official"
but "recognized": Aragonese (Aragon), Asturian (Asturias), and Leonese
(Castile and León).

And there are countless dialects of each.

~~~
nandemo
For what is worth, Galician is essentially a variant of Portuguese, in the
sense that it's mutually intelligible with European and Brazilian Portuguese.
There are differences in pronunciation but not significantly more than between
European and Brazilian Portuguese.

------
mariuolo
"Presidential deGrees"?

