As this project appears to be fairly unknown in the fediverse still, I’d like to use this opportunity to advertise Flohmarkt. This Fediverse equivalent of Facebook Marketplace already has some instances up and running - see here: https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt/wiki/flohmarkt-instances
Great idea. I just wonder how Flohmarkt is read by non-Germans. Anyone want to state their opinion, their initial experience seeing the word, on that?
I think an English localization as ‘Flowmarkt’ or ‘Flowmarket’ might be more catchy in English-speaking countries, since the intended pronunciation for ‘Flohmarkt’ isn’t clear at a first glance.
Why would English be objectively better than German?
Because more people speak it?
Got it, let’s name it in mandarin then
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.
I love that you called it the lingua franca.
Why yes, English is the French.
Uh do you not know what “lingua franca” means or are you making a joke?
The latter. Though given the downvotes, I think people are either not smart enough to get it, or too smart and think I don’t get it.
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 ‘Flowmarkt’ or ‘Flowmarket’ in English-speaking ones.
Do you think Flohmarkt is worse than Volkswagen?
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.
I read it as being pronounced something like “flow-marked”
yeah, it’s quite close
Initial impressions of the name are not great.
Non-German but I am in the EU. Didn’t find it odd at all. Just assumed it was “flow market” in German.
Close. It’s flea market.
Definitely weird on first reading. New names often seem weird or dumb at first so maybe I’ll just get used to it. Anglicizing it might make sense? Fleamarkt?
“flow market”
Swede here, see no issue with the name. I’ll just ignore the h when pronouncing though.
That’s what you should do anyway, the h simply elongates the o
At least most speakers of European languages will pronounce it close enough to German - though most will not do make the r in markt as hard as Germans do.
Yeah but if you had to search for it you’d have a trouble spelling it. Flowmarked would be how English speakers would hear that I think.
It probably needs an English brand name for outside the germano-sphere - fedimarket?
And why should we name things for the exclusive convenience of monolingual English speakers to the detriment of everyone else?
I don’t disagree conceptually, but English has been a lingua franca for a long time now.
That’s not an issue for brands. German and Chinese brands are just doing fine everywhere with the possible exception of the two countries in the world where people are not exposed to other languages.
I forgot its spelling the moment i scrolled past it.
It honestly just looks like a spelling mistake to me
My American brain wants to read it as “FlowMart”, or “Flowmark”. Neither of which I have a problem with.
It reads like regurgitating dehydrated phlegm
Edit:
Germans: “Das is der inkorrect opinion Herr Irlandisch”