In an earlier article I decided to see if languages other than English were present in any great number as domain names with the generic extension .Com. I took four English words, house, movie, insurance and travel and translated them into French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Yiddish. Why Yiddish? I was using a dictionary circa 1956 that provided listings for all these languages and thought it might prove interesting. After translating the four words, I tried to register them with a .Com domain name. To no one's surprise, the words were unavailable in all the major languages. Two words in Yiddish were available, but Yiddish being spoken by less than five million people I decided to pass on them.

In this article I took the same four English words and tried to register them in the "ccTLDs" (country code Top-Level Domains) of the countries listed above: France, with the domain extension .Fr; Germany, represented by domain extension .De; Italian, represented by .It and Swedish, .Se. I left Yiddish out. This time I was mildly surprised to discover not a single word was available as a domain name. I guess I wasn't surprised by the German .De, but I wouldn't have thought so many English words would have been used in the two more restricted extensions, French .Fr and Italian .It. Knowing how touchy the French are about their language I expected less interest in English words. As for Italian, A chart showed the .It had been registered less than two million times; that means, I think, a high percentage of English words.

What does this mean? I'm not sure. I'd be the first one to admit my methodology was anything but scientific. It does, however, show a great deal of language cross-pollination that we never had before. Even languages that have fought to stay pure are involved. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.

Mike Nardine operates http://www.CheapMikesDomains.com. Mike sells domains and hosts websites at competitive rates.