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Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

yatrimotorcycles.com

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Re: Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

#31

Post by lgessler »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #17
throwaway5d097 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With languages that are not written phonetically with wide regional variations in pronunciation (English), I think it makes sense to not care as long as you're understood. Might as well demand that Japan be pronounced Neep-on or Cuba Cooba and not Cyooba.

I always liked the BBC's approach -- English words and well settled loan words are allowed to have regional pronunciation, foreign words go via the pronunciation unit. So news readers pronounce (or try in the case of that Icelandic volcano) locations, names etc as they are intended to be. Names are personal, it's offensive to mispronounce them. Make the effort, even if it involves struggling a little with sounds that…

I'm generally in agreement and want to anticipate an objection—that the sounds of foreign words often fall well outside of any given person's native set of sounds.

Take Iran for example. It's rendered often in English as [ɑɪ.ɹæn] (eye-ran). What it "should" be is [i.ɾɑn] (ee-rahn). Fortunately, all the sounds in [i.ɾɑn] are ones that occur in most varieties of English (with the exception of the [ɾ], but that's minor), so most speakers are able to accommodate without issue.

Now compare that to Shanghai: its English rendition is [ʃeɪŋ.hɑɪ], and its Mandarin pronunciation is [ʂâŋ.xài]. Most Englishes lack the voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ], and the same for the voiceless velar fricative [x], and to make matters worse, Mandarin is tonal, which puts the correct pronunciation of this word squarely out of reach for almost all English speakers.

It still makes sense to insist that people try as hard as they reasonably can. Perhaps to say that speakers should get as close as possible—in the case of Shanghai, for example, maybe this would mean [ʃɑŋ.hɑɪ] instead of [ʃeɪŋ.hɑɪ].

Re: Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

#32

Post by lgessler »

dfee wrote: post #24
mkagenius wrote: post #2

May I take this opportunity to highlight to our American friends that its not pronounced as Nay-Paul. No. Its pronounced as Nay-Paal.

Here is a list of English words with two consecutive a’s: https://www.morewords.com/contains-by-length/aa Despite having a cumulative 8 years of foreign language courses against three different languages, I have no clue how you’re expecting me to pronounce “paal”. Is it “pal” - like friend / buddy? “Pail” - like something you’d carry water in? Something else?

It's approximately same sound that's in "all": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_back_unrounded_vowel

Re: Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

#33

Post by forinti »

Is there a reason for most motorcycles not to be electric by now?

Few people take them on the road, they seem to be used mostly in cities, so there's not a big problem with range.

They are small, so you would have less of a problem setting up the charging infrastructure in your house.

Re: Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

#34

Post by NeedMoreTea »

lgessler wrote: post #31
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always liked the BBC's approach -- English words and well settled loan words are allowed to have regional pronunciation, foreign words go via the pronunciation unit. So news readers pronounce (or try in the case of that Icelandic volcano) locations, names etc as they are intended to be. Names are personal, it's offensive to mispronounce them. Make the effort, even if it involves struggling a little with sounds that…

I'm generally in agreement and want to anticipate an objection—that the sounds of foreign words often fall well outside of any given person's native set of sounds. Take Iran for example. It's rendered often in English as [ɑɪ.ɹæn] (eye-ran). What it "should" be is [i.ɾɑn] (ee-rahn). Fortunately, all the sounds in [i.ɾɑn] are ones that occur in most varieties of English (with the exception of the [ɾ], but that's minor)…

You're right that some come with not easily reached challenges, like the tonality of Chinese. BBC reports will periodically give a rendition that's like a foreign speaker dubbing in one word that feels alien to our natural tongue, with different intonation and what have you. Sometimes that sounds a little jarring or unnatural in the middle of a sentence. I picture the odd newsreader having to spend 20 minutes in a corridor trying to practice today's impossible challenge.

But I do give a lot of marks for them trying and exposing us to how the person pronounces their own name or town, and prefer it to Anglicising everything. Even if sometimes it only results in an imperfect close attempt with a layer of English speaker's difficulty, or that we don't realise it's not quite correct Finnish or Cantonese etc.

Re: Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

#35

Post by orange3xchicken »

forinti wrote: post #33

Is there a reason for most motorcycles not to be electric by now? Few people take them on the road, they seem to be used mostly in cities, so there's not a big problem with range. They are small, so you would have less of a problem setting up the charging infrastructure in your house.

They are definitely coming. I would totally love to get one. I think one issue is that they are typically a lot more expensive than traditional motorcycles. Additionally, there are not too many used electric bikes that have significantly depreciated in value. For example, I purchased my current bike at ~2k from craigslist. I just looked up the prices for some used Zeros on CL and they vary around 10-20k. In the US, for the most part, motorcycles are still typically viewed as being toys.

Looking forward to see how well the Lightning Strike does.

Re: Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

#36

Post by [deleted] »

aaron695 wrote: post #16

People in Nepal and developing countries need cheap/er gasoline powered motorcycles/scooters. I'd start with people with first world problems to develop the tech. Anyway, video, what they have done seems pretty insane given the timeline, not sure how much is off the shelf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBNV2gbrswg

[deleted]

Re: Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

#37

Post by [deleted] »

aaron695 wrote: post #16

People in Nepal and developing countries need cheap/er gasoline powered motorcycles/scooters. I'd start with people with first world problems to develop the tech. Anyway, video, what they have done seems pretty insane given the timeline, not sure how much is off the shelf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBNV2gbrswg

[deleted]

Re: Yatri: First electric motorcycle to be made in Nepal

#39

Post by BubRoss »

forinti wrote: post #33

Is there a reason for most motorcycles not to be electric by now? Few people take them on the road, they seem to be used mostly in cities, so there's not a big problem with range. They are small, so you would have less of a problem setting up the charging infrastructure in your house.

As far as I can tell, a huge part is that they are incredibly overpriced. No one is going to pay $14k for an electric cycle when a brand new gas cycle costs $8k. People put together their own scooters from batteries, a controller and an electric motor on YouTube all the time, but companies are trying to get people to give up the same amount that could buy them a Ducati.
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