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> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö Yes, but why prefer these letters? I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more ex
by joshdavham 2mo ago
> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö
Yes, but why prefer these letters?
I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic?
- elwell 2mo agoYës
- tstenner 2mo agoYou mean öf cårse?
- joshdavham 2mo agoHåhåhåhå
- arnarbi 2mo agoNordic nod of approval
- qurren 2mo agoWhy not rename to IKEÅ ?
- decimalenough 2mo agoBecause it would then be pronounced IKE-Oh. Also, the A is short for Agunnaryd, the founder's hometown. (IK is his initials, Ingvar Kamprad, and E is for Elmtaryd, his family farm.)
- qurren 2mo agoThe A can still stand for Agunnaryd and the circle at the top can be the midnight sun, which embodies the sprit of Sweden
- unwind 2mo agoTo reiterate on another comment that would make no sense to Swedish speakers. Å is a distinct letter, with a different and unique vowel sound. It is in no way "a slightly different kind of A". Your suggestion sounds a bit like spelling Apple like AIILE and using the circles to form a cool infinity symbol. Or something.
- nullhole 1mo ago[dead]
- ButlerianJihad 2mo agoröck döts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_umlaut A møøse once bit my sister...
- DonHopkins 2mo agoI raise you an em-dash —̈ with an umlaut! Suck on that, AI Slop Detector! (Confession and question for dang: I actually used an LLM to generate that unicode composite to copy and paste —̈ is that against HN guidelines?)
- mirmor23 2mo ago> I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic? of course. Haagen Dazs, Motorhead, etc have known it loooong ago
- HoldOnAMinute 2mo agoPöyzen Böyzen
- Snild 2mo agoThose are the letters we have that are distinct from English. Not exotic to us, but yeah, "weird letters" is probably considered part of the international brand now. By the way, we consider them unique letters, not A and O with diacritics. The Swedish alphabet goes …XYZÅÄÖ. Oh, and I just learned that we only officially added W in 2006. Before that, it was considered a variant of V. We still pronounce them the same, which is why many swedes will mix them up when speaking English. Mostly in the W->V direction, but I've heard the opposite happen too.
- bonoboTP 2mo agoHuh, interesting that they are collated at the end. These differences also makes sorting language dependent. In Hungarian it's A, Á, B, C, Cs, D, Dz, Dzs, E, É, F... So Cu--- comes before Cs---
- xigoi 2mo agoEven worse, in Czech it’s A B C Č D Ď E F G H Ch I J… • „če“ goes after both „ca“ and „ci“, but „ác“ goes between „ab“ and „ad“ • „cha“ goes after „da“ and „ha“
- vidarh 2mo agoJust to make things worse, the Scandinavian languages use different versions of what have historically been the same letters, and collate them differently. E.g. Norwegian has æ (Ä), ø (Ö), å, collated in that order. Technically the Swedish variants are not part of the Norwegian alphabet, but they're typically collated with their modern Norwegian equivalents. At least in Norwegian, ae, oe, and aa is also traditionally collated as if they were using these letters, so a word starting "aa" comes at the end of the alphabet, after z, oe and ae....
- tokai 2mo agoWhich has resulted in this catastrophe: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71OSnDl45vL.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71OSnDl45vL.jpg
- 1mo ago
- mihaelm 2mo agoI guess it helps with emphasizing their Swedish identity, which is one of their goals with naming. Doesn't gel too well with "feels good to say" for a non-native speaker, but I see their point.
- z2 2mo agoYeah, given they sell to every continent, I find it utterly impossible they truly tested this with each of the dozens to hundreds of languages their customers speak.
- devsda 2mo agoNot sure why, but when I see certain diacritics with latin alphabet, my brain tries to place the language somewhere in Europe. I don't know if I can call that an exotic feeling but it certainly feels foreign.
- bonoboTP 2mo agoScandinavia and the Nordics are quite fancy and refined for Americans. Lagom, hygge, fika, the minimalism, the enlightened equality and solidarity, good education, little crime, highest happiness ratings, even prisons are like hotels, etc makes it a kind of imagined lifestyle that's cozy and thoughtful and so on.
- fcatalan 2mo agoThat's how they getcha, and then go full midsommar...
- ErikCorry 2mo agoCould also be Vietnamese, they are big on diacritics.
- xigoi 2mo agoVietnamese can easily be recognized because most words are one syllable and the vowel may even have two diacritics stacked on top.
- decimalenough 2mo agoThanks to French, who came up with the current writing system.
- DonaldFisk 2mo agoA Portuguese Jesuit, actually: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Pina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Pina
- 2mo ago
- dhosek 2mo agoMost likely. In the early 90s there was a knock-off of Ikea called Stør which used the ø for exoticism. I had assumed that it was a Danish company, but apparently, not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STØR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STØR (The store where I bought some of my first furniture from—off the 60 in City of Industry—was quite possibly the original location).
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- nubinetwork 2mo ago> knock-off of ikea We have one called jysk... They're doing alright.
- dhosek 1mo agoStør was really blatant to the extent that they were successfully sued by IKEA for their duplication. They were eventually bought out by IKEA, probably for the real estate.