In the popular mind, the Internet is the realization of the global village, where the flow of information and ideas is unimpeded by distance or national barriers. Much has been written {{U}}(1) {{/U}} the technology and the benefits that this system of unregulated information exchange will bring. But {{U}}(2) {{/U}} has been very little discussion about the languages—human, not computer languages {{U}}(3) {{/U}} are being used on the Internet.
Central {{U}}(4) {{/U}} the ideology of the emerging Internet community is the freedom of the individual users to express {{U}}(5) {{/U}} as they like. Nevertheless, {{U}}(6) {{/U}} recently, it has been very difficult to communicate through the Internet in any language {{U}}(7) {{/U}} could not be expressed in the standard English alphabet as defined {{U}}(8) {{/U}} the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII).
English is already the premier {{U}}(9) {{/U}} of science and technology worldwide. The peculiar restriction of {{U}}(10) {{/U}} able to communicate with only the limited ASCII character set has worked to further encourage the {{U}}(11) {{/U}} English, especially by those {{U}}(12) {{/U}} native language is not normally expressed in some version of {{U}}(13) {{/U}} Roman alphabet.
In fact, it seems to be typical that {{U}}(14) {{/U}} accessing a network in a non-English speaking country {{U}}(15) {{/U}} is often presented with a choice of the local language(s) or English. Many of the national networks that have now linked {{U}}(16) {{/U}} to the Internet are used {{U}}(17) {{/U}} scientific and technical communication, {{U}}(18) {{/U}} a rapidly growing portion of the Internet's community are non-professional people.
Familiarity with English may be assumed {{U}}(19) {{/U}} a linguist or a physicist, but growing {{U}}(20) {{/U}} of users with no English language skills are joining the net in {{U}}(21) {{/U}} of the dominance of English in message forums and mail lists. Messages {{U}}(22) {{/U}} the Usenet newsgroups are overwhelmingly {{U}}(23) {{/U}} in English, and the bulk of the moderated mailing lists (including {{U}}(24) {{/U}} Linguist Discussion List, and international E-mail discussion list for linguists) are conducted in {{U}}(25) {{/U}}.