[Governance] Linguistic gTLDs

[Tapani Tarvainen]

A quick clarification, I expressed myself poorly:

Allowing both .quebec and .québec is not surprising or even really
problematic at all.

The surprising thing is that some characters are treated differently
for no good reason, including ø, æ and ŋ.

(There is *a* reason: because nobody thought about those when the
process was started, adding them would have delayed the process,
possibly by a month or two.)

The proposed policy will come up for public comments some time early
next year. Danes, Norwegians, Icelanders, Faroese &c might want to
comment. Perhaps their characters will get equal treatment eventually,
even if not in time for the next gTLD round next spring.

- I'm a member of the ICANN group developing this process (which has
been pretty smooth even though in this particular issue I was
overridden). If someone want more details, feel free to ask.

Tapani

On Thu, Nov 13, 2025 at 06:39:30PM +0200, Tapani Tarvainen via Governance (governance at lists.igcaucus.org) wrote:
> 
> This is an interesting topic. One related issue is that ICANN is
> considering how to treat gTLDs in Latin script that differ only by
> diacritics, like .quebec vs .québec.
> 
> Somewhat surprisingly at the moment it seems they're going to allow
> such to coexist as long as the operating entity is the same (and so
> able to avoid confusion), but not all languages will be treated
> equally. For instance, they would allow .sjo, .sjö (Swedish) and .sjó
> (Icelandic) in such situations, but not .sjø (Norwegian/Danish/Faroese).
> 
> Although at the moment it seems the policy won't be decided in time
> for the next round next spring, and lots can happen before the next one.
> 
> Tapani
> 
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2025 at 08:41:43AM -0400, Daniel Pimienta via Governance (governance at lists.igcaucus.org) wrote:
> > 
> > Colleagues,
> > 
> > I see an item  on new gTLDs in the program of *Forum de la Gouvernance de
> > l’Internet France 2025 <https://www.afnic.fr/en/observatory-and-resources/expert-papers/the-french-internet-governance-forum-fgi-france-2025/>.*
> > It may be of interest of some of you to know that a study has been realized,
> > on request from .cat (Catalan) organization, for the worldwide screening of
> > the languages which could benefit from a linguistic gTLD : Following the
> > Legacy of Pioneer .CAT: Identifying World Languages Best Suited for
> > Linguistic gTLDs <https://domini.cat/documents/Estudi_Daniel_Pimienta.pdf>,
> > D. Pimienta/domini.cat, 1/2025
> > 
> > Additionally, original data on European linguistic gTLDs can be consulted in
> > https://www.obdilci.org/projects/other/gtld/
> > 
> > On 11/13/2025 5:13 AM, Joly MacFie via Governance wrote:
> > > 
> > > *LIVESTREAM <https://youtu.be/yT-boZilDhA>  | PERMALINK
> > > <https://isoc.live/19851>*
> > > 
> > > Le *Jeudi 13 Novembre 2025 *le *Forum de la Gouvernance de l’Internet
> > > France 2025 <https://www.afnic.fr/en/observatory-and-resources/expert-papers/the-french-internet-governance-forum-fgi-france-2025/>* (FGI
> > > France) se tiendra à Paris et en ligne. Objectif : engager les
> > > multiplesparties concernées dans un dialogue sur la gouvernance de
> > > l’Internet. Une webdiffusion en direct sera assurée par l’*Internet
> > > Society France Chapter <https://www.isoc.fr/>*.
> > > 
> > > 
> 
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-- 
Tapani Tarvainen