The words behind an address in your own script.
Short, checkable definitions. Each one is the term as the standards bodies use it, with what it means for a DataMail user in one line.
- Linguistic email also: native-script email, vernacular email
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An email service where the address itself, both the part before the @ and the domain after it, is written in the user's own script rather than in Latin letters. DataMail, launched in October 2016, is documented by the ICANN Universal Acceptance Steering Group as the world's first free email service for international languages.
For you: प्रिया@डाटामेल.भारत is a complete, deliverable address, not a display name over a hidden English one.
- IDN Internationalized Domain Name
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A domain name containing characters outside the ASCII letters, digits and hyphen, such as डाटामेल.भारत or 例え.テスト. Defined by the IETF's IDNA standards (RFC 5890 to 5894). The visible Unicode form is converted to an ASCII form for the domain name system.
For you: The part of your address after the @ can be in your script. India's .भारत, .ভারত, .இந்தியா and similar top-level domains are IDNs run by NIXI.
Source: RFC 5890, IDNA definitions
- EAI Email Address Internationalization
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The set of IETF standards (RFC 6530 to 6533) that let the whole email address, including the part before the @, contain Unicode characters, and let mail servers transport such messages. Without EAI, only the domain could be internationalized.
For you: This is what makes the name part of a DataMail address possible in Devanagari, Tamil or Arabic. Gmail has accepted EAI addresses since 2014, Outlook.com since 2018.
Source: RFC 6530, overview and framework for internationalized email
- SMTPUTF8 SMTP extension for UTF-8 addresses
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The extension to the mail transport protocol (RFC 6531) that a sending and a receiving server both announce when they can handle UTF-8 in addresses and headers. If either side lacks it, a message to a native-script address cannot be delivered along that route.
For you: When mail to a DataMail address bounces from an older corporate server, this missing extension is usually why. Fewer than 10% of servers worldwide support it.
Source: RFC 6531, SMTP extension for internationalized email
- Punycode the ASCII encoding of an IDN
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The algorithm (RFC 3492) that turns a Unicode domain label into an ASCII string starting with xn--, so that the domain name system, which only understands ASCII, can resolve it. डाटामेल.भारत becomes xn--c2bd4bq1db8d.xn--h2brj9c.
For you: You may see the xn-- form in a browser address bar or a bounce message. It is the same domain, not a fake.
Source: RFC 3492, Punycode
- Universal Acceptance UA
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The goal, coordinated by ICANN's Universal Acceptance Steering Group, that every valid domain name and email address works in every application, including new top-level domains and addresses in any script. Most of the work is fixing software that assumes addresses are short and ASCII-only.
For you: When a website form rejects your native-script address, that site is not UA-ready. DataMail's founder chaired the UASG from 2019 to 2023.
- .भारत India's Devanagari country-code top-level domain
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The Devanagari-script equivalent of .in, operated by the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) under the Ministry of Electronics and IT. India also has .ভারত (Bengali), .ਭਾਰਤ (Gurmukhi), .ભારત (Gujarati), .இந்தியா (Tamil), .భారత్ (Telugu) and .بھارت (Urdu), among others.
For you: DataMail addresses use these domains, so the whole address stays in one script: name and domain alike.
Source: NIXI, .IN registry
- Unicode the universal character set
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The standard that assigns a number to every character in every writing system, so that a Devanagari conjunct, a Tamil compound letter and a Han character can all be stored and transmitted the same way. Email and the web use its UTF-8 encoding.
For you: Your address is stored as Unicode and delivered as Unicode. No transliteration to English letters happens anywhere in DataMail.
Source: The Unicode Consortium
- Label Generation Rules LGR
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ICANN's rules, written per script by community panels, defining which characters may appear in a top-level domain label in that script and which look-alike variants must be blocked, so that a domain in one script cannot impersonate another.
For you: The Neo-Brahmi panel that wrote the rules for Devanagari, Bengali, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and others was co-chaired by DataMail's founder.