33 countries are interested in domains in their national languages.

ICANN has received applications from 33 countries to register domains in their national languages. If all applications are approved, website addresses will be allowed in 22 additional languages.

So far, Russia, as well as countries such as Thailand, Tunisia, Jordan, Egypt, China, Saudi Arabia, and Hong Kong, have received their own domains in their national languages.

Applications have been submitted by Qatar, Singapore, Syria, and Romania. Ukraine is also trying to obtain its own .УКР domain, but the process has been stalled.

ICANN plans to begin the application review and domain transfer process on November 16. ICANN representatives estimate that only about 50 applications will be submitted over the next two years.

To satisfy all of these requirements, it's not just the countries submitting such applications that must comply. A number of technical issues must be resolved for these domains to be fully launched, including ensuring that characters from national alphabets are correctly displayed on different computer monitors.