We know Chinese is complicated! We’re here to simplify matters…
Chinese Language comprises hundreds of dialects of the common language metagroup known as Chinese. Chinese, as a language group, is more than 5,000 years old!
The overwhelming majority of Chinese speakers use the Mandarin or Cantonese dialects.
Mandarin Chinese is typically written in Simplified Chinese characters in China’s mainland, and in Traditional Chinese characters in Taiwan and some other parts of the Chinese-speaking world.
Mandarin is also written in the Mandarin “Pinyin” romanization system, which uses ASCII characters. Pinyin is in ubiquitous use in China’s mainland and worldwide – it is the first form of Chinese which every mainland Chinese child is taught. Regardless that Mandarin Pinyin is written in ASCII characters, it is not English. It is a pure and Chinese-government-standardized form of Mandarin Chinese.
Cantonese is the dominant form of Chinese in the southern parts of China’s mainland, Hong Kong, Macau, and most “Chinatowns” around the world. Cantonese is typically written in Traditional Chinese characters. In systems analogous to Mandarin Pinyin, Cantonese is commonly romanized using ASCII characters. The major forms of romanized Cantonese include without exception Barnett-Chao, Meyer-Wempe, Standard, Guangdong Romanization, Hong Kong Government Romanization, Yale, and Jyutping. This sounds complicated but it isn’t really — these are just different ways of writing Cantonese Chinese using English letters.
TLD Registry is committed to supporting the increased use of Chinese Language on the internet, and our policy is one of inclusiveness for all Chinese Language users, regardless of their preferred type of Chinese Language.
In other words, in Dot Chinese Online (.在线) and Dot Chinese Website (.中文网), you can register Simplified Chinese characters, Traditional Chinese characters, Pinyin, Romanized Cantonese, and English too!
Click here to see an explainer infographic for all the styles of domain names which can be registered!