Hi Michael, Not sure which part are you disagreeing with: 1) main driver for analysis is technical; or 2) linguistic argument not relevant; or both? Anyway, the key message I was trying to make is that the analysis on sharp S is on technical grounds. That the technical issue originated because of linguistics conventions getting into protocol, sure. But absent of the technical issues we would not be exploring this case, would we? Dennis On 9/6/19, 2:47 AM, "Latingp on behalf of Michael Bauland" <latingp-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Michael.Bauland@knipp.de> wrote: Hi Dennis, On 05.09.2019 21:02, Tan Tanaka, Dennis via Latingp wrote: > The primary reason we are considering this case is due to the IDNA > issue. And the proposed allocatable solution is to minimize the > misconnection issue that arises with certain browsers. The linguistic > argument is a moot point (in my opinion) greatly in part because it is > not a clear cut rule (i.e. swapping sharp s with “ss”, or vice versa, > can alter the meaning of a word) and it can be argued that the target > market of sharp S (Germany) has been conditioned (by their country code > registry operator) that domain names using sharp s and “ss” are different. I have to disagree here for two reasons: 1. Although Germany is the main market (due to the large population) we must not forget Austria and Switzerland (and there are also border regions in neighbouring countries where German is the mother tongue). Those countries also speak the same language (well, more or less at least). At least for Swiss people there is no real difference between ß and ss as they spell all their words with ss instead of ß ... while at the same time accepting ß when reading as a totally valid spelling. 2. Even though Denic (.de registry) decided to make ß and ss different, it's hardly the case that the people in Germany are "conditioned" in any way. From my experience (I haven't read any official studies related to this topic) I would say that more than half of the people aren't even aware that they can use ß in domain names. Cheers, Michael -- ____________________________________________________________________ | | | knipp | Knipp Medien und Kommunikation GmbH ------- Technologiepark Martin-Schmeisser-Weg 9 44227 Dortmund Germany Dipl.-Informatiker Fon: +49 231 9703-0 Fax: +49 231 9703-200 Dr. Michael Bauland SIP: Michael.Bauland@knipp.de Software Development E-mail: Michael.Bauland@knipp.de Register Court: Amtsgericht Dortmund, HRB 13728 Chief Executive Officers: Dietmar Knipp, Elmar Knipp _______________________________________________ Latingp mailing list Latingp@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/latingp _______________________________________________ By submitting your personal data, you consent to the processing of your personal data for purposes of subscribing to this mailing list accordance with the ICANN Privacy Policy (https://www.icann.org/privacy/policy) and the website Terms of Service (https://www.icann.org/privacy/tos). You can visit the Mailman link above to change your membership status or configuration, including unsubscribing, setting digest-style delivery or disabling delivery altogether (e.g., for a vacation), and so on.