back to article Wales loses 'dot-cum' domain to tax haven

The organisation behind a bid to give the Welsh their very own top-level internet domain has been forced to rethink its plans after a rule change made its first-choice domain verboten. DotCYM had planned to apply to ICANN next year for ".cym", pronounced "dot-cum", to represent Welsh people, language and culture globally. But …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. M Gale
    Coat

    .cym?

    But surely that has too many vowels?

    Yeah I know, I'll get my coat.

    1. Tigra 07
      Thumb Down

      RE: M Gale

      It's the Welsh, they have to be awkward.

      They can't just use .co.uk like the rest of us

      Where do they think being separate from the UK will leave them?

      Needing passports to enter England, with less money per head and with less development.

      Nowhere good in the long run

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Oh right...

        Er, maybe we just want to try and retain some identity? You know, since we were a separate country that was annexed by England, with a now struggling separate culture, identity and language. Regardless of devolution or independence, it's nice to have your own identifier especially for things that are pertaining to your own country, in your own language. i'm sorry if that offends you.

        Twll tin.

        1. Tigra 07
          Thumb Down

          No title required

          You have identity already, but to split every country further into more, and then even more into .whatevers you just end up with many more imitation sites

          With 1 for every city in the world it will be really tiresome.

          Microsoft.wales

          Microsoft.london

          Microsoft.co.uk

          Microsoft.com

          Microsoft.birmingham

          Imagine how quickly that gets dull when you can't find the right website.

          And you have a struggling language because you don't use it anymore, very few Welsh people do anymore. you could teach it in schools along with your Welsh history and culture but you don't

  2. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

    Languages

    All languages except English must be banned in computer technology. I mean, use them for documents, alright, but in anything to do with addresses, commands etc they must be made absolutely illegal.

    1. PerfectBlue

      Sarcasm?

      I really hope that's sarcasm.

      English is only a common language when you consider it as a second or third language. When you consider first languages then it's a poor second to Chinese.

      About than 1 in 6 of the world's population read Chinese as a first language. There are already more Chinese internet users than there are people in total in the US, or in Europe.

      Give it a few more years and there will be more Chinese people on the internet than there are people in the US and EU combined.

      Based on this, the internet should be converted into Chinese, as Chinese outnumber everybody else.

      1. The BigYin

        @PerfectBlue

        Chinese? The Internet should be converted to Klingon!

        ---

        Actually, there are security implications when one considers non-Latin characters sets. Which URL is correct? "www.microsoft.com" or "www.micrоsoft.com"? And no, they are not the same (well, they weren't when I typed them in).

        1. M Gale

          Oddly enough...

          ...that wierdly-coded Microsoft got changed to "http://www.xn--micrsoft-qbh.com/" by Chrome, which then failed to find the address.

          Also, three downvotes for someone who just pointed out that the entire world does not have English as a first language? I didn't know there are that many Daily Mail readers here...

          1. Allan George Dyer
            Boffin

            That is punycode

            used for encoding Unicode into characters acceptable in domain names.

      2. Martyns

        .engwish

        Yeh, but there are more Chinese people speaking English than native English speakers, and I bet most of them can spelligna better than wot we can too.

      3. alexh2o
        Paris Hilton

        English

        @PerfectBlue - There are a couple of problems with your argument. Firstly, Chinese (all forms) is not considered a "World Language", rather a regional or super-regional one, due to the fact that outside China it has very little sway. This compared to English, which is a World Language and recognised as an official language of the EU, USA, India, etc.

        Yes, you are correct in saying more people speak Chinese as a first language than English, over double in fact. Though that number is nearer to 1 in 8 people (when talking in the billions thats a big difference!). However, globally close to 2 billion people speak English, around 30% more than Chinese (all forms).

        Then perhaps even more important in this context is not the language, but rather the alphabet. Standardising code to the Latin Alphabet, which English is based upon,is far more logical as it is the basis for over half the world's primary spoken languages, unlike Chinese.

        Finally, English has already established itself within current standards and codes, while the vast majority of tech companies and influence is based in English speaking countries (USA..). All major OS's, programs, programming languages, web standards, etc are based on English.

        So actually, the idea of having one standard 'digital' language is very compelling and practical. Choosing English, or rather continuing to choose English, is by far and away the most logical given its current and future status.

        (p.s. there's a big push within China to adopt English more widely, as an official second language!)

        1. Someone Else Silver badge
          Welcome

          But of course...

          " [...] there's a big push within China to adopt English more widely, as an official second language!"

          But of course...as they're gonna own us...lock, stock and GDP...in the next few years, they had better learn English in order to communicate with their newfound chattel....

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Welcome

            I for one welcome our new English-speaking, iPod-making overlords

      4. Evil Auditor Silver badge

        @PerfectBlue

        (I hope his comments wasn't pure sarcasm...)

        Of course, you are right, there are more people with mother tongue Chinese than English. Also considering internet users there are far more non-native than native English speakers. But, this does not really matter.

        For historic reason internet is based on English/the latin alphabet. It is the simplicity of this alphabet which is why it not only dominates the internet but also world-wide use. And the same simplicity makes it easier for Chinese to learn it than ever will be for western people to get used to some thousands of Chinese characters.

        This does not mean that English will remain lingua franca for ever. I bet, however, that whatever is will be in the future, it's going to be something simple, simlier than Chinese. So I don't quite agree with Vladimir with English having to be the only language in computer technology. But please stay with the standard latin alphabet (without umlaut, accents, etc) or something equally simple such as katakana.

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Boffin

        Chinese language?

        Not forgetting, of course, that Chinses is a family of related (but mostly mutually-incomprehensible) languages, rather than a single language. Mind you, English may be going the same way in all its different incarnations around the world.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          cultural reasons

          English current dominance is one of the reasons non-English power blocks want the ability to break the English Language strangle hold on the internet.

          English is only the language of business because the most powerful industrial nation uses it. USA for generations has been the most important trading nation for goods (industrial/electronic/consumer and, raw) and a wealthy consumer market, it speaks English, so other people that want to do business learn English. Including all the other nations that want to be players (India/Brazil/Russia/China/Japan/Germany) if you want to be a player you need to know the Language.

          China and India at the moment want to change that, now it wont happen over night, but the end goal is that over the next century those of us in English dominated cultures will need to learn a new language (be it a Chinese or Indian language or some other upstart that .) Russia too wants to be represented, they still chase former glory.

          If the internet (a primary tool for global communication) is locked into English (and other European scripts) it makes this ideal almost impossible. As such these nations will force the issue (and they can, they have the money, political savvy and, man power to force a lot of things these days.)

          The Eastern Dragons are waking up, hope you've got breakfast ready for them. The west doesn't have a defacto right to anything, we could just keep hold of it because we had the biggest stick in town.

        2. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

          Sarcasm?

          No. Not at all.

          FYI: My first language is Russian and I still maintain that the sole language for operating computer machinery should be English and the character set should be Latin.

          It's not difficult to learn a 100 or so words that are being used in computer programs' menues? And the English alphabet is only 26 characters - small price to pay in training of even the most hard-of-learning person when you consider that the prize is universal compatibility and global search and accessibility of information.

          1. The Indomitable Gall

            Things must be very different in Russia.

            "It's not difficult to learn a 100 or so words that are being used in computer programs' menues"

            Learn, computer programs? Everywhere I've been you're just plonked in front of a computer and expected to pick it up as you go along. The whole point of the menu system is to stop you needing training.

            (I do still believe in training personally, it's just the rest of the world with unmaintable hacked-up Excel spreadsheets that could be done in a structured and maintainable way in Access in half the time if they knew what they were doing that believe not being trained is in some way admirable.)

            Anyway, if we're going to learn 100 or so foreign words, why use English? If people have to learn foreign words to use computers, why not Chinese? Chinese words take up less screen space, after all, and what with the iPhone and all that, screens are finally starting to get smaller again.

            Also, with Chinese characters, you don't even have to learn the Chinese word. If you see the Chinese for "cut" you can tie the ideograph to the English word "cut".

            Superior in every way.

            But localisation is dead easy, so we don't need one single UI language anyway.

            1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

              @The Indomitable Gall

              "If people have to learn foreign words to use computers, why not Chinese?"

              Well, you do that. You are considered barely literate in China (pre-school level) if you only know about 3000 of these symbols. And then you have to interpret every word. In Latin you need 26 letters and a few words - how difficult is it to learn File, Save, and Exit?

              "Everywhere I've been you're just plonked in front of a computer and expected to pick it up as you go along."

              That's my point exactly - it will be much simpler to pick it up if all computers used one language in their UIs.

              And last but not least - English is much more concise and laconic language where you can use single words to describe concepts that need many words in other languages (like Russian). Therefore, Russian-language menues consist of gibberish which you can only understand if you learn that this particular corruption of a word means this particular action of your computer - so you still have to learn literally another language.

      6. Allan George Dyer
        Coat

        Let's start now...

        传统或简体中文?

        傳統或简体中文?

        I said, Traditional or Simplified Chinese?

        Mine's the one with the Babelfish URL in the pocket...

    2. Tigra 07

      RE: Vladimir Plouzhnikov

      I actually kinda agree there with you Vladimir Plouzhnikov.

      How does a chinese person in the UK search for a chinese web address with an English keyboard?

      More cost to then buy one and have it imported unless you like to copy and paste everything

      This system has suited us fine until now but it does need to change to allow other languages, it's only fair.

  3. fLaMePrOoF
    Coat

    How about...

    .bah

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      .baa?

      that's all.

    2. Liam Johnson

      or

      .boyo

      1. lpopman
        Coffee/keyboard

        titular amusement

        hows about .sheepf.uk?

        1. John G Imrie

          sheepf

          I thought that was a Yewnix command :-)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mutation

    then Gym instead?

    (FYI Gymru is the Soft mutation of Cymru.)

  5. PerfectBlue

    .Wales

    So, when is England going to get it's own domain? Or it's own parliament.

    Too long have the English been slaves of the UK. Free the English, Free the English, Free the English.

  6. Ian Stephenson
    Troll

    I reccommend they go with .meh

    For all the interest the rest of the world has in the Welsh language.

    What's next .toon for geordies?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      I reccommend they go with .meh

      "What's next .toon for geordies?"

      Personally, I thought they'd have gone with .yi ...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My personal view...

    ... is that united we stand, divided we fall especially when it comes to European issues.

    I'm Welsh by birth and raising, but live and work in England. On official forms I class myself as British.

    While I fully understand the strong role that our strong history plays in our personal identites in the present, there must surely be some way of us working together as Great Britain or United Kingdom or whatever you want to call it, without all this bickering which has led in some cases to violence.

    The last thing we need is to be fighting among ourselves, making our presence even smaller than it already is.

    Politics is already a mess; I think that a load of smaller fish in collectively smaller ponds won't help. While we need to draw strength from our past, we risk throwing away our future.

    But that's just my view.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I got that wrong...

      ... a load of small fish in a big pond trying to make themselves bigger by making the pond smaller.

      Some politicians should remember what the job title stands for ... "poli" many - "ticks" blood sucking creatures.

    2. Ian Ferguson
      Troll

      Following that logic...

      ...we'll be even stronger if we stand together as Europeans, and put aside our infighting... but somehow, I don't think you're going to agree with this view ;)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        On the contrary...

        I do agree.

        I think that the society portrayed in Star Trek, where everyone is rewarded according to their contribution, where money doesn't occur because all peoples basic needs are met, and where individual religions are respected but kept from having too much influence on the whole, is something worth while striving for.

        It will take a major change in the view of humanity itself before we could reach such a point however. Not going to happen in my lifetime ... not many others, I suspect. Probably take some global catastrophe to make humanity band together to that degree.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          one

          One of the main things that would allow such a nation would be a source of near unlimited power ( Fusion / Massive Geothermal complexes ) Fusion would be most useful in the long run as it could power craft.

          What would this do? Well with near limitless power you wouldn't need anywhere near as much oil, and in theory processes to create artificial materials to replace plastic may be more realistic further reducing oil needs. Also with near limitless clean energy you would be able to run electrical vehicles without a huge amount of worry.

          While oil and gas will still have a role (fueling backup generators in datacenters, providing power to hard to reach facilities, Aircraft, boats etc) it would be greatly devalued. Two major benefits a reduction in green house and a greatly reduced amount of money going to shady governments and shady companies.

          So other problems this can solve, cleaning salt water to make it drinkable is power hungry work, but if you have fusion or geothermal power available again this is more realistic. With more water you can have more aribal land, more food and work leads to happier people, so on and so forth.

          Now the other thing is after a few generations of technology the price of electricity will have plumeted (you'll be using a uniform method of power generation reducing maintenance costs and you should have industrial lines pouring out required components) so the costs related to needing power also plummet (imagine how much of the total cost of a product is actually the power that went into getting resources out of the ground, transporting them, smelting, manufacturing, combinging, marketing etc)

          Of course one thing to remember is we spend more money on plastic bags than researching fusion power or exploring for geothermal locations.

      2. FoolD

        A parliament too far ?

        @Ian Ferguson

        I think many eurosceptics don't - fundamentally - have a problem with European co-operation and many even have a strong sense of European identity. They just don't see the EU (in it's current form) as the best solution for a strong Europe.

        The scepticism often comes from the underhanded way the EU operates and the seeming unaccountability of it. The way to win the sceptics over would seem to be to address those concerns rather than ignore/belittle them.

        Of course, in many regards these criticisms can also be levelled at the UK parliament as well - which may explain many Welsh/Scots and even English people's growing desire to be separate from that too...

    3. Paul Kinsler

      yep

      and just give them *.wales.uk to play with.

  8. The BigYin
    Thumb Down

    Eh?

    .uk covers Wales. Why does it need it's own? .eng anyone? Or .lancs? Or .lon? Or .23StirrupLane?

    What is wrong with the world when people feel the need to chop themselves up into ever smaller groups?

    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      Pirate

      There's nothing wrong with the world

      That's how human nature works - we need to identify ourselves with a peer group, excluding outsiders. The drive is stronger in some than in others, but it can be seen in all walks of life.

      When that tendency starts driving global policy, we're all screwed....

      GJC

    2. Andrew the Invertebrate

      .lancs ?????!!!!1111111!

      surely you mean .thewrongsideofthepennines with .therightsideofthepennines having already been claimed by it's White Rose wearing proper owners.

      1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

        Re: .lancs ?????!!!!1111111!

        .eck

        .moors

        .gum

        1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

          Re: Re: .lancs ?????!!!!1111111!

          (Those are Yorkshire. Not Lancs. T'other.)

          1. John G Imrie

            By 'ek lass

            Thy come from nor'e t'Humber.

            1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

              Re: By 'ek lass

              Do I heck as like.

              1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

                Re: Re: By 'ek lass

                (Excuse me, 'eck)

    3. The Indomitable Gall

      By that reasoning...

      ".uk covers Wales. Why does it need it's own?"

      Well, .eu covers the UK too. As do the non-geographic names.

      And consider all the registrations in Companies House that include some geographical descriptor. Location is part of brand. And some franchises only operate in certain areas (Hertz Wales is distinct from Hertz UK, for example, or it was last time I tried to return a car across the border).

      The TLD can and should be used as part of the brand or it is wasted space, and that means allowing subdivisions of this manner.

      And in case you didn't notice, TFA does in fact mention ".london" as a possibility.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        .albion

        .uk is not geographically representative enough for me. I will only settle for .alb. By all means our neighbours should be entitled to get .hib and .mon(a).

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Remind me

    are these new extensions for the good of the internet or for the bank balance of registrars?

    1. JimC

      The registrars of course: silly question.

      Just think of all those millions of extra cybersquatters filling in their rego forms...

  10. The Metal Cod

    Or

    .taff

  11. LinkOfHyrule
    Coffee/keyboard

    .cym

    And always thought .cym was some sort of potential porn site domain! Silly me!

  12. The Vociferous Time Waster

    Independence

    Please can we just sell Wales and Scotland to someone else to reduce our debt (not that we'd get much for them). We'd be rolling in it once we lose the welfare bill for those two leaches.

    1. The Indomitable Gall

      OK, but...

      You'll have to give us our oil-fields back.

      Then we'll see who the leeches are.

    2. qwertyuiop
      Thumb Up

      We'd go quite happily!

      Although since most of the UK's offshore oil and gas fields are in Scotland's territorial waters you might find it not quite so easy to pay off your debt without the tax income!

    3. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Please do.

      And we in Wales can start charging you a market rates for the water you rely on from our reservoirs. That'll be fun.

      GJC

      1. Ian Stephenson

        I never realised..

        that Kielder was in Wales.

        facepalm icon please!

        1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
          Happy

          Kielder isn't in Wales

          And neither is it big enough to supply all of England's water requirements. Which is why there are a bunch of reservoirs in mid Wales that supply, from memory, Liverpool and much of the West Midlands.

          Facepalm yourself, dude.

          GJC

          1. Ian Stephenson
            Troll

            Fair point but...

            The North East Water region is self sufficient and a net exporter of water. You did not specify what part of England.

            Personally, Wales is welcome to Liverpool, I'll even throw in Manchester if you want it.

            If Yorkshire Water got off their arses and fixed the leaks they might be self sufficient too....

  13. Wang N Staines

    Simple

    What's Welsh for "cum"? Why not use that instead of .cym?

  14. The Indomitable Gall

    .roma

    I bet the Roma Nation guys would be a bit upset if Rome got that one....

  15. Chrome

    Pronunciation

    Cracked us all up at school when our Welsh teacher informed us you can always identify a Welsh car because it has Cym on the back

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Alternatively....

    .taf or maybe .baa

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As Wales is part of the UK...

    Couldn't they have .cym.uk, along with .sco.uk for Scotland, .knw.uk for Cornwall, .man.uk for the Isle of Man and so on?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      UK vs British Isles

      ".man.uk for the Isle of Man"

      Any moment now ....

      1. LinkOfHyrule
        Joke

        Can we please have

        Can we please have .tosser.uk for Surrey then?

        1. Mark Aggleton

          Isn't...

          .... that reserved for BMW drivers?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The Isle of Man?

      The Isle of Man is not part of the UK.

      1. Old Tom
        Stop

        IOM already has a domain...

        .im

  18. Victor Ludorum
    Pirate

    That's all very well, but

    According to my research (scroogle is your friend...) the Caymans already have .ky as their TLD, so why to they need another one. I guess it's to differentiate between the genuine Cayman registrations and the 'tax haven' ones...

    Pirates, cos, well, it's in the Caribbean, isn't it...

    1. The Indomitable Gall

      Ah but...

      Look at the fuss over Google allowing competitors to bid on trademarks as adwords.

      We're talking misrepresentation here. They're saying basically that CYM has an internationally recognised meaning, and selling it to a third party would open people to use it fraudulently.

      Imagine you receive a 419 scam letter purporting to come from a banker in the Cayman Islands. And it has a .CYM address.

      So ICANN says "it's not for sale". Seems reasonable to me. (Even though I've been learning Welsh and am very supportive of Welsh nationalism.)

    2. Jim Morrow
      Flame

      FFS read the article!

      the article says icann has decided to prevent any of the new top-level domains from having three letters to avoid confusion with three-letter iso country codes.

      if .xxx goes though, it'll be the last one to have three letters because its application started under the old rules that no longer apply.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why?

    In these hard economic times where we'll all be eating coal within a year, does it even matter?

    Why not spend public money on a new heart monitor machine or cancer research? Something useful? We waste enough money on translation of all the road signs, websites, leaflets etc produced by the public sector but it looks like this waste is spreading when we should be making savings.

    Tell you what, sod it, let's use .co.uk, .ac.uk ... like we have been since the internet was invented. I doubt Wales generates enough addresses to flood the system and require its own domain

    1. Gaz Jay
      Stop

      This may surprise you....

      RE: "We waste enough money on translation of all the road signs, websites, leaflets etc produced by the public sector "

      This may surprise you, but there are people in the deepest parts of Wales where Welsh is spoken a lot more often than English. These native Welsh speakers would find it a lot easier reading Welsh than English.

      So when we are "translating all of the road signs" - we are actually doing it for the English speakers benefit. Or would you rather have to learn Welsh to understand our signs when you visit.

      Hwyl!

      1. The BigYin

        Question and Answer

        "Or would you rather have to learn Welsh to understand our signs when you visit."

        Yes, I'd rather get to grips with some Welsh. The script is the same, so when I see "Kashyyyk =>" on a sign, I will know precisely what it means.

        One wonders how the little English dears survive driving around rural France where all the signs are in (shock) French!

        1. Gaz Jay
          Thumb Down

          @The Big'Yin

          So no signs have any writing on them apart from Town names do they?

          Translate these signs into English:

          "Calol y dref"

          "Trefn ffyrdd newydd och blaen"

          "Unffordd"

          And translate these into Welsh:

          "No though road"

          "Free Recovery"

          "Cyclists Dismount"

          By the way, even town names are different between Welsh and English:

          Wrecsam => Wrexam,

          Caerdydd => Cardiff,

          Abermawdd => Barmouth.

      2. Maverick
        Thumb Down

        >have to learn Welsh to understand our signs when you visit.

        you have made an unfounded assumption there sir :)

  20. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Are they serious

    about having a top level domain pronounced dot cum????

    Does Wales REALLY want to be ridiculed?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Well

      isn't that what it's there for?

    2. The Indomitable Gall

      No, they're not.

      Welsh Y is a schwa phoneme. It is not "uh", no matter how many people say it is.

  21. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I learnt all the country codes I'll ever need

      Off the backs of cars and Jeux Sans Frontieres...

      "And Switzerland* has fallen off the slide!!!! hohohohohohohoh!"

      (* CH for Switzerland - from "Confederation Helvetica")

    2. Old Tom

      Eurovision

      If the UK had gone with its French name, it'd've had the .ru domain - leaving the Russians to cry into their vodka post USSR.

    3. Jim Morrow
      WTF?

      facts, not rumours

      Rumour has it that in the earliest days of the international Internet, it was decided to use .uk because .gb might offend citizens of N Ireland, and since no-one was using UK as an ISO-code, no problem. Then the USSR fell apart and Ukraine needed a country code - they had to settle for UA.

      This is all complete bollocks.

      There already was a naming system in the UK before it joined the Internet. uk was the top-level domain. Though it was on the left hand side of the domain name because that's how things were done back then. When the Internet arrived, the sensible thing was done: the ordering was flipped around and everything was anchored in the DNS root under .uk. .gb was/is still there but is mostly empty. GB is the official ISO country code for the United Kingdom, not UK.

      The Ukraine, like some other components of the USSR, already has ISO codes long before the Soviet Union. UA was probably assigned to Ukraine when that list was originally drawn up.

  22. ShaggyDoggy

    dot dum

    presumably 'dot' is not pronouced 'dot' in Welsh

    hot com then

  23. Geoff Thompson
    Pint

    dot toon

    I like it. Where can I register magpies.toon? Beer because we are still enjoying 5-1.

  24. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    Create subdirectory.... yerwot?

    This is just the logical progression of the brain-dead insistance on flattening the hierachial internet naming structure. Eventially, everything will be somelongstringofuniquecharacters.com because of course a hierachial structured system is too complicated for people to understand. After all, on your PC you store absolutely everything in a multi-thousand-file "My Documents" directory, why shouldn't the internet be any different?

  25. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

    How about .cum?

    Then they can make a killing selling domain names in the same way Tuvalu has. Then the tax balance between Wales and the UK as a whole would improve and maybe we could ALL get free prescriptions on the NHS?

  26. Robin Bradshaw
    Flame

    Phonetically

    Well heres a plan!

    If the welsh cant have .cym cant they just do what they do for everything else and just use the phonetic spelling, in this case .cum not only will they have their domain, they will likely be able to grab a serious chunk of the internet porn business, which would be nice as they dont have any other industry to speak of, except maybe mining pot noodles.

    I cant be the only one to notice that the welsh word for anything invented less than about 200 years ago is just the phonetic spelling of the english word:

    Ambiwlans

    Wicipedia

    Tacsi

    Coffi

    busnes < they missed a trick with this and should have used bsns :)

    so if ju wan tu rait welsh jest tranzlet the inglish tu fonetik spelin. If it isnt welsh now give it a few hundred years and it will be once welsh has properly turned into pidgin english.

    Sent from my house in wales :)

    1. The Indomitable Gall

      Well what about English then?

      Ambulance -- from French.

      Wikipedia -- from Hawai'ian wiki-wiki (quick) and Latin encyclopaedia

      Taxi -- from mediaeval Latin via German and French Taxameter/Taximètre.

      Coffee -- from Italian "caffè", itself from Turkish "kahveh", which in turn derives from Arabic "qahwah", which possibly derives from the name of the Ethiopian region "Kaffa".

      So if tu require a scriver English, solo translate a modicum of the Latin and Greek lexicons into a malformed version peppered with bon mots de francais et un pizza Italiano. A little Deutsh just to upkeepen mit the zeitgeist. If it isn't English now, just give it a few hundred years and it will be once English has properly turned into Pidgin European.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Speaking Welsh

    is like using an Apple Mac - completely pointless and counter productive but it annoys the normals.

    As the great Ali G once said "so tell me, what is so good about Wales, cos I has heard it's shit"

    On a more sensible note - why don't Welsh companies just register .cym addresses anyway? As there are more Welsh people than Cayman Islanders after a while .cym would be effectively de-facto for Wales anyway.

    1. Ian Stephenson
      Coat

      there...

      As there are more scammers than Cayman Islanders and welsh people combined after a while .cym would be effectively de-facto for 419ing anyway.

      ...fixed it for you.

  28. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    hierachial internet naming structure

    I think the problem with a hierarchal system is that "cardiff.wales.uk.british-empire" might upset the taffys

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Ignorance...

    If you think we get 'free' prescriptions in Wales then you are sadly deluded. It gets paid for out of the NHS budget given, i.e. less money for other NHS uses in Wales.

  30. Eugene Crosser
    FAIL

    lol.cat

    "The Catalan people, for example, have been been able to register names in the tiny .cat domain for the last few years."

    Such a shame lol.cat points to a dull parking page!

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    Here's a suggestion

    .sheep

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    internet, Wales ...

    Are you sure?

  33. disgruntled yank

    so

    The Internet remains in its Precambrian Era?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      'Precambrian'

      Neat.

      Clever, which is more than I can say about most of the above (usual mix of ignorance and nastiness with the occasional good sheep joke).

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    works for me

    .bas.tard

    works for me.

    Seems to describe most of the welsh I know!

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Please calm down and get off the back foot...

    Give them a break ... it's hardly Nazis on the march. Nothing wrong with a bit a cultural posturing as long as it doesn't get out of hand. If you have really suffered at the hands of the Welsh (and therefore have right cause to be disgruntled) then you are either a) very weak, or b) Inter Milan.

  36. Geoff Heaton

    How about ...

    .lush

    1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: How about ...

      .tidy

  37. Nick Pettefar

    Gwfnym h!

    Working in Bridgend - centre of the known chaviverse.

    Just been to pick something up from Freecycle - the address had NO vowels in! Gott sei Dank for Tomtom! I would NEVER have been able to ask the way...

    93 Cwrt Y Mwnws

    I ask you.......

    Yes, Chinese is a nonsense language. Totally unsuitable for technology. They invented the printing press a long long time before Gottenberg but never used it as it would take too long to make up the pages to print. Japanese too. Complete waste of time.

    1. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      FAIL

      No vowels?

      That address has four vowels in. Perhaps you might learn a little about the area you work in before doing the "Loud, confident and wrong" thing?

      GJC

  38. ShaggyDoggy

    Snooker

    snwcer

    I ask you, it is necessary ?

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like