A short history of the Catalan campaign to win the .cat Internet domain, with implications for other minority languages
Peter Gerrand
(pgerrand@gmail.com)
PhD student within the Spanish/Catalan/Galician and Media Studies Programs at La Trobe University
Professorial Fellow in Telecommunications at the University of Melbourne
Abstract
On 15 September 2005 ICANN approved the first top-level Internet domain to be devoted to a particular human language and culture: .cat. This paper describes the history of the Catalan campaign to win the .cat domain against political opposition from the former conservative Spanish government and the reluctance of some decision-makers within ICANN circles. While .cat creates a precedent for greater use on the Internet of 'minority languages', there are significant hurdles for other candidates for language-based top-level domains. The paper discusses the concomitant factors needed to support the greater use of any minority language on the Internet.
Keywords
Catalan nationalism
,Internet history
,minority languages
,sociolinguistics
Submission date:
January 2006
Published in:
May 2006
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