311–320 of 342 posts
I was looking at IKEA's home automation stuff, some of which uses the name TRÅDFRI and I thought the "FRI" part sounded like "free" and sure enough this just means "wireless". I'm guessing the "TRÅD" part is possibly a cognate of English "thread", so "thread free" is a literal translation. (I don't speak Swedish so forgive me if I'm completely off on this.)
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The fact that Sz in Hungarian reads as s and other way around, S becomes sh - is mind-boggling especially for Poles, where Sz is pronounced as sh . and S remains s .
Wait for the Italian where "cc" makes a "ch" sound and "ch" is "k" * When followed by e or i.
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile. I present to you "Svalka" wine glasses. Dump", rubbish heap", or easy, promiscuous woman of ill repute in informal Baltic (and Slavic?) slang.
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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).
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.
> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages This procedure does not always work: https://adland.tv/whats-name-case-2351-ikeas-gutvik-bunk-bed
I'm German, and I'd pronounce "-vik" the same as the beginning of "Victor". With a soft "w".
I was looking at IKEA's home automation stuff, some of which uses the name TRÅDFRI and I thought the "FRI" part sounded like "free" and sure enough this just means "wireless". I'm guessing the "TRÅD" part is possibly a cognate of English "thread", so "thread free" is a literal translation. (I don't speak Swedish so forgive me if I'm completely off on this.)
That is the correct translation, well done!
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Most 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 (The store where I bought some of my first furniture from—off the 60 in City of Industry—was quite possibly the original location).
> knock-off of ikea We have one called jysk... They're doing alright.
Clear and interesting names is extremely good customer experience. Most companies name their products straight from the ERP system, creating incomprehensible codes that sounds like they come from Star Trek. Ikea has pioneered so much within service design (design beyond the actual product). The in-store journey, the self-assembly, the assembly instructions, clear naming, clear product display, in-store restaurant exp…
At the opposite end of the spectrum we have Sony Mobile, where product names are probably assigned by their worst enemy. You can fully expect them to release a high end phone called Xperia one II 10 as successor to last year's Xperia one III And also a low-end phone called Xperia II 10 Ultra Making it impossible for buyers to know which phone to buy this year.
Or maybe the USB-IF
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the opposite end of the spectrum we have Sony Mobile, where product names are probably assigned by their worst enemy. You can fully expect them to release a high end phone called Xperia one II 10 as successor to last year's Xperia one III And also a low-end phone called Xperia II 10 Ultra Making it impossible for buyers to know which phone to buy this year.
Microsoft's school of naming versions, windows (95->98->xp->vista->seven->8...) and xbox (360, one, series x)