Twitter rolled out hashtag support for global languages recently, in a feature they’re calling ‘Global Hashtags’.
While an official announcement hasn’t been made yet — Eden Golshani, Software engineer at Twitter sent out a few tweets to test the feature last week, demonstrating hashtag support for 11 Indian languages along with Cherokee, Armenian, Greek, Tibetian, and Amharic.
— Eden Golshani (@edeng) February 10, 2015
Raheel Khursheed, head of news at Twitter India confirmed the Indian languages getting hashtag support, linking to an example of tweets being hashtagged in Indian languages. Hashtags can also be a combination of two languages.
Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam & Kannada Hashtags, Now live! https://t.co/7On7iq6SUu
— Raheel Khursheed (@Raheelk) February 17, 2015
— Raheel Khursheed (@Raheelk) February 17, 2015
Blaft, a Chennai-based publisher of the Obliterary Journal was one of the first to make use of the feature.
OMG #IndicScriptHashtags! #ஹாஷ்டேக்#हैशटैग#நன்றிடுவிட்டர்#നന്ദി#ధన్యవాదాలు#शाबाश#જન્મદિનમુબારક#ପୋଲିସ୍କୁଡାକ#གཙང་སྤྱོད་ག་བ་ཡོད་པ་རེད།
— Blaft Publications (@blaftness) February 10, 2015
Twitter users have already discovered this feature, making #जयहिन्द trend on Sunday during the cricket World Cup match between India and Pakistan. Tonight, Tamil users made their script the top Twitter trend in India with #தமிழ்வாழ்க, (Tamilvalka), which means 'Long Live Tamil'.