China Favouring Digits Over Letters When It Comes to Internet Addresses

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China Favouring Digits Over Letters When It Comes to Internet Addresses

By CircleID Reporter
May 05, 2014, 10:27 pm PDT Views: 15,735 Add Comment

When it comes to Internet addresses in China, use of digits have been preferred over letters for various reasons including ease of memorization. Christopher Beam from New Republic explains: “To a native English-speaker, remembering a long string of digits might seem harder than memorizing a word. But that’s if you understand the word. For many Chinese, numbers are easier to remember than Latin characters. Sure, Chinese children learn the pinyin system that uses the Roman alphabet to spell out Mandarin words (for example, the word for “Internet,” ??, is spelled wangluo in pinyin). And yes, Arabic numerals (1-2-3) are technically just as much a foreign import as the Roman alphabet (A-B-C). But most Chinese are more familiar with numbers than letters, especially those who didn’t go to college. To many, “Hotmail.com” might as well be Cyrillic.”

By CircleID Reporter

CircleID’s internal staff reporting on news tips and developing stories. Do you have information the professional Internet community should be aware of? Contact us.

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