Comment on Flohmarkt - a Fediverse replacement for Facebook Marketplace

• state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Because more people speak it?

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  • timestatic@feddit.org ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    This is about localization, not about renaming the thing

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  • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Got it, let’s name it in mandarin then

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    • Jrockwar@feddit.uk ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Language	Native Speakers	Total Speakers	Sources
      English	~380 million	~1.5 billion	Wikipedia
      German	~76–95 million	~155–220 million	Wikipedia
      Mandarin	~941 million–1.12 billion	~1.1–1.3 billion	Wikipedia

      Well, it has 10x more speakers than German, but it still has fewer speakers than English and most of them are localised in a single country.

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    • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Please stop being an obnoxious ass. English is the de-facto lingua franca of the world, acting like German is in any way comparable is just disingenuous.

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      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I love that you called it the lingua franca.

        Why yes, English is the French.

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  • lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Chinese says hi.

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    • state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Please stop these idiotic arguments. I don’t think you’re actually so dumb, that you don’t understand what my point was. So you’re being willfully obtuse just to annoy other people. Also, Chinese isn’t a thing. You probably mean Mandarin Chinese, which does have the highest number of native speakers. But English is still the common language (or lingua franca) across the world, even though it is number 3 in terms of native speakers.

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• Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I didn’t say it was. An important aspect of promoting the adoption of any product or service is having a brand name that is easily pronounceable to facilitate word-of-mouth promotion. It’s something that’s all the more important for a Fediverse service, given the lack of means to promote Flohmarkt with paid advertising campaigns.

  While Flohmarkt works as a brand name in German, it’s not immediately clear how to pronounce it in English, versus the easily pronounced Lemmy, Mastodon, Misskey, Pixelfed, Loops, and Friendica. For that reason, ‘Flohmarkt’ should be kept as the platform’s name in German-speaking countries, but be localized as ‘Flowmarket’ in English-speaking ones.

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  • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Do you think Flohmarkt is worse than Volkswagen?

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    • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yes, since the pronunciation of Volkswagen can be inferred from taking ‘Volks’ as rhyming with ‘Folks’ and either pronouncing ‘wagen’ as intended—with ‘gen’ rhyming with the ‘gain’ in ‘again’—or just pronouncing it as ‘wagon’. In contrast, the pronunciation of ‘kt’ at the end of ‘flohmarkt’ can’t be inferred from an existing English word. Additionally, using the spelling ‘flow’ disambiguates the English pronunciation of ‘floh’, especially when dialect is taken into account.

      Ultimately, because Volkswagen has had decades of advertisements marketing its proper pronunciation and making the brand name widely-recognized, it has an inherent advantage in terms of brand recognition to start with.

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      • Miaou@jlai.lu ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I’d bet a lot of money the average English speaker pronounces Volkswagen with a “vee” at the beginning

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