How to refer to "The Internet" in Esperanto?

Question

I have seen at least 3 ways to refer to "The Internet" : la reto, interreto, la interreto.

What is the most common way to write "The Internet"? Are some of them deserving to be avoided?

Answer 1

The Internet is La Interreto, but just as Internet in English has transformed over the years to be lowercase as internet, the same applies to Esperanto, so today I would recommend calling it interreto (literally inter-web), which is also the word we officially teach in Duolingo's Esperanto course for English speakers. Note that in English, this exact same trend also happened to e-mail. Today style guides recommend us to just write email.

Reto just means web, but la reto could also be translated as the net. But just like in English this could also mean any kind of web like a spider's web or even metaphorically like a web of connections between people. Online (as in "talk to me online") is usually best translated as rete (literally: webly) although "I am online" would best be translated to Mi estas enreta.

On the same topic, you also might find an interesting sidenote that in the early days of the internet, the World Wide Web (WWW) was often translated as the Tut-Tera Teksaĵo (TTT, literally: Total Earth Textile-Thing). This has since fallen out of use, but you will occasionally encounter it on old Esperanto websites.

Answer 2

In (semi)formal contexts, (La) Interreto seems to be most preferred.

(La) Reto refers to (The) Net. This is most common.

---

Generally, these two terms are interchangeable. Using la can help discern between some other large networks and the Internet, if the meaning is contextually ambiguous.