3 ms·

Sometimes it works and name are weird, nice and fun. But sometimes, quite a lot, I think that it is counter productive because the name is hard to remember, spe

Sometimes it works and name are weird, nice and fun. But sometimes, quite a lot, I think that it is counter productive because the name is hard to remember, spell or say if local language. So in the end, hard to say to a seller or type on the part screen the name of what you want. Most of the time you will not be able to remember what was the name of the thing and have to look around and find by categories to find again what you are looking for. And forgot the name already 3 days after. And actually i was multiple time annoyed by that. For example, look at the baby changing table name: ÄLSKVÄRD. Also, hard to remember/pronounce name make it that often you are lost and confused between multiple names that doesn't make any sense to you like HFEREZR versus HORCRUX. One case that frustrated me a lot is: good luck finding which white cabinet door you need to buy between VEDDINGE and VALLSTENA that are 99,9% the same, and have the same description on ikea website and shops... In the warehouse you are looking for it, you look for the thing starting with the V, like VA...VII... something, and you find VEDDINGE. Was it this one i needed to be or another name similar?

jltsiren 2mo ago
I think your actual issue is that spelling and pronunciation are too inconsistent in your native language. With a more consistent language, it's pretty easy to remember foreign words and names using the pronunciation in your native language, assuming that the letters are mostly the same. You don't need to understand the word or know the correct pronunciation (though both obviously help).
- greatgib 2mo ago
  There are 2 things that are unrelated. When you can't say or pronounce a word, in most language it is hard to remember it. Also, there is the question of degree of similarity or sound of reading unknown foreign words. If you don't speak ch ok Chinese, a lot of words with different meaning will kind of read or sound the same and it will be very hard to recall and differentiate them.
  - jltsiren 2mo ago
    My point was that you can usually pronounce foreign words in your native language, if the alphabet is the same and your language has a straightforward mapping between spelling and pronunciation. And then you can derive the spelling from that fake pronunciation. For example, my native language is Finnish, and that approach works for most words in Germanic, Romance, and Baltic languages. Polish and Czech words are harder, as they often have too many consonants to have a Finnish pronunciation.
    - zamadatix 2mo ago
      It goes beyond spelling - English doesn't even have all the phonemes to represent ÄLSKVÄRD if you wanted to (particularly the last half) so you just have to guess how that should sound anyways, especially since unfamiliaretters exist at the same time. If course you can do the approximation, it's not too hard to try, but you can do the same thing with spelling or any other attribute and end up with the same kind of problem - it just isn't the kind of word you'd deal with day to day. I wouldn't mind if English had some standardized spelling though :D.

jltsiren 2mo ago

I think your actual issue is that spelling and pronunciation are too inconsistent in your native language. With a more consistent language, it's pretty easy to remember foreign words and names using the pronunciation in your native language, assuming that the letters are mostly the same. You don't need to understand the word or know the correct pronunciation (though both obviously help).

greatgib 2mo ago
There are 2 things that are unrelated. When you can't say or pronounce a word, in most language it is hard to remember it. Also, there is the question of degree of similarity or sound of reading unknown foreign words. If you don't speak ch ok Chinese, a lot of words with different meaning will kind of read or sound the same and it will be very hard to recall and differentiate them.
- jltsiren 2mo ago
  My point was that you can usually pronounce foreign words in your native language, if the alphabet is the same and your language has a straightforward mapping between spelling and pronunciation. And then you can derive the spelling from that fake pronunciation. For example, my native language is Finnish, and that approach works for most words in Germanic, Romance, and Baltic languages. Polish and Czech words are harder, as they often have too many consonants to have a Finnish pronunciation.
  - zamadatix 2mo ago
    It goes beyond spelling - English doesn't even have all the phonemes to represent ÄLSKVÄRD if you wanted to (particularly the last half) so you just have to guess how that should sound anyways, especially since unfamiliaretters exist at the same time. If course you can do the approximation, it's not too hard to try, but you can do the same thing with spelling or any other attribute and end up with the same kind of problem - it just isn't the kind of word you'd deal with day to day. I wouldn't mind if English had some standardized spelling though :D.