# How easily do non-English readers work with Latin letters? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 6, 2022, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easily-do-non-english-readers-work-with-latin-letters/957292 "2022-01-06T02:02:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2022, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easily-do-non-english-readers-work-with-latin-letters/957292/1 "2022-01-06T02:02:34Z")
Like I just saw a piece of government literature with a short blurb in, say, Korean, with a URL to a Korean language version of the document online. The URL, of course, is “in English.” That got me wondering about something I never thought before: how quickly do Koreans or Russians or anyone who doesn’t work with the Latin alphabet get the hang of it? It’s practically a required skill to use the internet, but I know from experience how hard it can be to work with a written language that doesn’t resemble your own at all. Is the Latin alphabet just that much smaller and easier than, say, Chinese that it’s no problem for the Chinese reader with no prior exposure to learn how to write a typical URL quickly? ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2022, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easily-do-non-english-readers-work-with-latin-letters/957292/2 "2022-01-06T02:11:59Z")
That’s something I’d never thought of before. I’ve never seen a URL written in the Cyrillic, Korean, or Chinese alphabets. Are all URLs written in the Latin alphabet? Or do I just not get out much? ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2022, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easily-do-non-english-readers-work-with-latin-letters/957292/3 "2022-01-06T02:50:21Z")
I guess you don’t get out much? 🙂 > **[РНИДС](https://xn--d1aholi.xn--90a3ac/)** > > РНИДС је стручна, нестраначка, невладина и непрофитна организација, која управља регистром националних интернет домена Србије .RS и .СРБ. > [@Leaper](#): > > That got me wondering about something I never thought before: how quickly do Koreans or Russians or anyone who doesn’t work with the Latin alphabet get the hang of it? It’s practically a required skill to use the internet, but I know from experience how hard it can be to work with a written language that doesn’t resemble your own at all. Is the Latin alphabet just that much smaller and easier than, say, Chinese that it’s no problem for the Chinese reader with no prior exposure to learn how to write a typical URL quickly? How many Latin letters do they need to learn? Like 26? And you had better believe those are covered in school. The other way around, you would have to work harder if you wanted to learn 4–5k Chinese letters. Korean and Russian will be a lot less work, of course. ---
**Author:** ![TheGunIsMightierThanThePen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thegunismightierthanthepen/32/2981_2.png) [@TheGunIsMightierThanThePen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheGunIsMightierThanThePen)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2022, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easily-do-non-english-readers-work-with-latin-letters/957292/4 "2022-01-06T02:58:37Z")
While I can’t comment much on the OP’s query since I grew up with English as my main language, I can take a stab at **ekedolphin** ’s questions. > [@ekedolphin](#): > > Are all URLs written in the Latin alphabet? URLs are a subset of URIs (Uniform Resource Identifier), and URIs conform to Internet Standard [RFC 3986](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986#section-2), which specify that URIs are limited to the US-ASCII character set `ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789-._~:/?#[]@!'()*+,;=` However, another standard, the [IRI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_Resource_Identifier) (Internationalized Resource Identifier) builds upon the URI protocol by allowing the [universal character set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Character_Set), whereupon > [@](#): > > All non-ASCII code points in the IRI should next be encoded as [UTF-8](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTF-8), and the resulting bytes [percent-encoded](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding), to produce a valid URI. > > Example: The IRI [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ῥόδος](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BF%AC%CF%8C%CE%B4%CE%BF%CF%82) becomes the URI `https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BF%AC%CF%8C%CE%B4%CE%BF%CF%82` Your browser then does the behind-the-scenes work of converting the percent-encoded foreign characters into their native forms that you see on the screen. > [@ekedolphin](#): > > I’ve never seen a URL written in the Cyrillic, Korean, or Chinese alphabets. > **[Арктическая экспедиция Грили](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D1%80%D0%BA%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%8D%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%93%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%B8)** > > Арктическая экспедиция Грили 1881—1884 годов; другие названия: Экспедиция в залив Леди-Франклин (англ. Lady Franklin Bay Expedition), официальное название — Международная полярная экспедиция (англ. International Polar Expedition) — американская научно-исследовательская экспедиция на Канадский Арктический архипелаг под руководством лейтенанта Адольфа Вашингтона Грили. Экспедиция была организована военным ведомством США в рамках первого Международного полярного года. Её целью было создание метеорол... [http://카카오.com/](http://xn--vk5b15ma.com/) > **[中国大陆报纸列表](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%A4%A7%E9%99%86%E6%8A%A5%E7%BA%B8%E5%88%97%E8%A1%A8)** > > 本條目是在中国大陆发行的报纸的列表。中国大陸共有日报816家，非日报1344家。 > “国家级报纸”，也作“全国性报纸”。以下列出在中国境内全国发行的付费报刊，以字典序排列。表示该报刊是机关报。 > 注：以斜体标注的报纸表示已停刊。 ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2022, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-easily-do-non-english-readers-work-with-latin-letters/957292/5 "2022-01-06T13:16:17Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > Is the Latin alphabet just that much smaller and easier than, say, Chinese that it’s no problem for the Chinese reader with no prior exposure to learn how to write a typical URL quickly? For Chinese typing nowadays, it’s common to use a Latin character keyboard that converts pinyin to Chinese characters. Students learn the Latin alphabet in school for use in pinyin as well as for learning English (or other languages). > **[Pinyin input method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin_input_method)** > > The pinyin method (simplified Chinese: 拼音输入法; traditional Chinese: 拼音輸入法; pinyin: pīnyīn shūrù fǎ) refers to a family of input methods based on the pinyin method of romanization. > In the most basic form, the pinyin method allows a user to input Chinese characters by entering the pinyin of a Chinese character and then presenting the user with a list of possible characters with that pronunciation. However, there are a number of slightly different such systems in use, and modern pinyin methods provi...