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Because digit numbers are not foreign to Chinese. As simple as that. The majority of Chinese don't speak any western languages. A domain name of letters is no

by jamesli 12y ago

Because digit numbers are not foreign to Chinese. As simple as that. The majority of Chinese don't speak any western languages. A domain name of letters is no different from a random combination of letters to them, even if the name is composed of real words in English, Spanish, or French, etc. They are completely foreign. While a combination of digits is not, like phone numbers, zip codes, bus numbers, train numbers, etc. They deal with them everyday. My parents don't speak any other languages other than Mandarin. [To be accurate, my mother spoke some Mongolian, and my father spoke a little Russian, when they were young. But they couldn't speak any of them now.] They have no problem in recognize and pronounce the 26 letter in English. After I have been living in American for so many years, they still can't spell my home address. They remember my phone numbers and my house numbers, though, but not the street names. Think about it. It is amazing. Because I find it is much easier to remember street names than phone numbers. Phone numbers are simply a random combination of digits, except the area code.

arrrg 12y ago
That makes complete sense. The number system is quite universal and global, writing systems are not, or at least not to the same extent. I would be lost if you asked me to type in a Cyrillic URL (and Cyrillic is quite similar to Latin script, all things considered!), I wouldn’t even know where to start if you asked me to type something from an even more different writing system in. I suppose English is on its way to gain some of the same universality as Arabic numbers, but it’s still a far way away from that.
rdtsc 12y ago
Thank you for sharing that, that makes complete sense. My parents also don't speak English. They speak Romanian, so when they see English they read it as if it is Romanian. Like if they see "house" they might pronounce it as "hoe-oo-seh" (just say every letter, and pronounce with as if it is from a Romanian alphabet). I guess I never thought what it might be like if it was a completely unpronounceable alphabet like Greek for example. At that point a string of digits would work better.

by jamesli 12y ago

arrrg 12y ago

That makes complete sense. The number system is quite universal and global, writing systems are not, or at least not to the same extent. I would be lost if you asked me to type in a Cyrillic URL (and Cyrillic is quite similar to Latin script, all things considered!), I wouldn’t even know where to start if you asked me to type something from an even more different writing system in. I suppose English is on its way to gain some of the same universality as Arabic numbers, but it’s still a far way away from that.

rdtsc 12y ago

Thank you for sharing that, that makes complete sense. My parents also don't speak English. They speak Romanian, so when they see English they read it as if it is Romanian. Like if they see "house" they might pronounce it as "hoe-oo-seh" (just say every letter, and pronounce with as if it is from a Romanian alphabet). I guess I never thought what it might be like if it was a completely unpronounceable alphabet like Greek for example. At that point a string of digits would work better.