Re: what is the real problem?

Consider the problem of a student from a country that uses an 
ideographic written language who is attending university in a country 
that uses an alphabetic language that is compatible with ASCII (English 
is one such language, not quite the only one).

The student cannot write to his relatives at home because their email 
addresses require him to use characters that are not supported by the 
ASCII-based MTAs at his university.

The relatives cannot write to the student because they can only write 
in their native language and script, and therefore they cannot type the 
student's email address.

And I'm not at all sure it's reasonable to assume that people will 
either communicate in their native language or in English.  I've seen 
too many examples to the contrary.

Keith