Internet URLs were designed assuming English (specifically ASCII characters). `https://www.example.com/about` feels natural to English speakers, but for billions whose native languages are Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, or Hindi, it's a foreign character string.
In 2003, Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) specifications were formalized, enabling non-ASCII characters in domains. Japanese domains like "example.jp" in kanji, Chinese domains, and Arabic domains became technically possible. Japan began Japanese domain registration under ".jp" in 2001. However, adoption remains low: of approximately 1.7 million .jp domains in 2026, only about 100,000 (roughly 6%) are Japanese-language domains.
Reasons for low adoption include input difficulty (switching to Japanese input mode, typing kanji, converting) and Punycode conversion issues (Japanese domains display as meaningless strings like "xn--r8jz45g.jp" in some applications). Multilingual internet books are available on Amazon.
Arabic presents even greater complexity. Arabic is written right-to-left (RTL), fundamentally conflicting with left-to-right URL notation. Embedding Arabic domain URLs in Arabic text creates mixed directionality, causing display issues known as the "BiDi (Bidirectional) problem."
Ironically, short URLs serve multilingual internet better than IDN. Short URLs are language-independent alphanumeric strings anyone can input and share. Converting long Japanese domain URLs to `bit.ly/xxxxx` eliminates input hassle and Punycode problems. English-based short URLs function more practically as cross-language tools than internationalized domain names designed for multilingual support. The URL language problem remains an unsolved challenge between the internet's English-origin history and the reality of global usage.