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The thing is, the Catalan community has a very strong presence on the Internet. As an example, the Catalan version of Wikipedia currently has +400.000 articles
by iagooar 13y ago
The thing is, the Catalan community has a very strong presence on the Internet.
As an example, the Catalan version of Wikipedia currently has +400.000 articles, being the 17th biggest.
To make clear what this means, you have to know that Catalan isn't even under the 100 most spoken languages worldwide (it has about 7 million speakers). So there is 1 article for every 17.5 people. Compared to the English version (4.4 million articles, 700 million speakers = 1 article every 159 people), or the Spanish one (1 million articles, 460 million speakers = 1 article every 460 people!), it is quite impressive.
So why would they want an own .cat domain? Because as a non-independent country / nationality, they are not allowed to have a two letter domain. Still, they wanted to be represented on the net so there was the PuntCAT foundation which did a huge effort in order to obtain the three letter .cat domain, but as it was sponsored, I imagine that they decided to restrict the usage of it to websites that have something to do with Catalan culture, or at least are written in Catalan.
I must say the Catalan culture and political movement is a pretty interesting topic itself, but I didn't want to make this post political, but rather interesting for "teh techies".
- MichaelGG 13y agoProvinces can get ccTLDs - Taiwan has .tw. Sponsoring and getting .cat is a pretty cool workaround, though.
- rahimnathwani 13y agoCan provinces really get ccTLDs? I thought .tw existed because Taiwan has an ISO country code: http://www.iso.org/iso/country_names_and_code_elements http://www.iso.org/iso/country_names_and_code_elements Having said that, I'm not sure why the UK (whose country code is GB) uses .uk
- rurounijones 13y agoBecause GB Is "Great Britain" (England, Scotland, Wales)[1] which does not include Northern Ireland. UK is "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" which is all four. It was a politically motivated move basically. [1] Lets not get pedantic here.
- micampe 13y agoHong Kong has a ccTLD (and an ISO country code, and a currency) but is not a country, while still mostly working like one.
- MichaelGG 13y agoIANA considers .tw to be "Taiwan, Province of China", as does that ISO link. As I understand, China pretty much bullied everyone else into not recognizing Taiwan so the rest of the world (like the UN) agrees Taiwan isn't a country. That's why one reason Microsoft asks for your Region, not country. There appear to be other ccTLDs like .IO and .AQ that aren't countries. (Probably more.) And I'm just being pedantic.
- rahimnathwani 13y agoBoth IO and AQ are ISO country codes as well. I'm not sure why.
- Nursie 13y agoWhether Taiwan is a province or a country is a contentious issue, and will depend heavily on who you ask.
- MichaelGG 13y agoWell as far as IANA concerned (which I suppose is the only relevant view for .tw), it's "Taiwan, Province of China"[1]: https://www.iana.org/reports/2010/taiwan-report-07jun2010.html https://www.iana.org/reports/2010/taiwan-report-07jun2010.ht...
- dmacvicar 13y agoFor curiosity. Does Valencia and Balearics use the .cat domain?. They seem to call their Catalan "Valenciano", even if it is the same language.