• Eq0@literature.cafe
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    4 hours ago

    I always, always am mystified when in a film someone says “that would be mister Schmidtt” and the other character just… writes the name down, no problem.

    I spell my family name out loud 100% of the times, still get post from official businesses with weird ass spellings!

  • Spacehooks@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Saw it Happen on lunch break were they called a matt and 2 Matt’s came up. Then John same thing, then Greg also 2 ppl. Would have funny but use numbers!

  • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    edit-2
    18 hours ago

    Why not have numbers? I never understood the need for names in places like this. Fuck you need my name for? What if there’s more than one John in here? Give me a number and call it out when ready… jeez.

    • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      2 hours ago

      I work in a place that uses names, if I had to guess it’s probably because it’s more personal. People are bad enough at paying attention to hear their own name, I have very little faith in people responding to a randomly assigned number.

      Also with phone in, online, and door dash et al. it might seem strange to use names for those, which we would need to because the person coming in isn’t going to know what number was assigned to the order, and only in the phone in scenario could we communicate that directly (online ordering could tell them but again, people are dumb, they won’t know).

      • PieMePlenty@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        7 hours ago

        I don’t know how it is in the states, but fast food places here give you a small beeper with a number on it, when your order is ready, it beeps/vibrates and you pick your order up. No one shouting names, no overhearing names, no losing attention when a device in your hand starts beeping/vibrating. The number on it serves as a secondary backup. I’ve not been in a place where name giving was required. Different culture I guess.

        • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 hour ago

          Never seen those for fast food here in the US. Sit down restaurants used to issue them to let you know when a table was ready, but that seems to have been replaced (at least in my limited experience) with asking for your number to text you. Which I’m sure is definitely the only way they’re using that number and they totally don’t keep it and sell the collected numbers off to data brokers later or anything.

        • MBech@feddit.dk
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          4 hours ago

          Around my parts in Scandinavia, the most used method is a number on your reciept and a screen where the number shows up when the order i ready. If someone isn’t paying attention to the screen, that’s on them, and they should feel bad. There’s no shouting names or number, and people don’t get the wrong order.

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      17 hours ago

      It’s probably supposed to make it more hip and personal. And the frequent complaints about misunderstandings are free marketing.

  • nelly_man@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    edit-2
    2 hours ago

    I had an English teacher in middle school who named her son Sean, pronounced like “seen,” and she always complain about how people always pronounced it like “Shawn.”

    Personally, I think it’s a tad rude to name your child with an uncommon spelling as it’s just setting then up for a lifetime of minor annoyances. But to use a fairly common variant and insist on a non-standard pronunciation is far worse.

    • McWizard@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      4 hours ago

      Does someone remember the story about the one her mother wrote “La-Da”?

      It’s obviously pronounced Ladashda…

    • I have a non-English name and I honestly don’t know what to say when they ask for my name so I just pause for like 3 second then think of a random English name to use lol, cuz I doubt they can read a Pinyin name lol and don’t wanna make it awkward.

      • ZoopZeZoop@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        18 hours ago

        I placed an order at a restaurant where you have a name for the order, but you also have names for particular food items. The main name was Mario Mario. The food items were various SMB characters. I went to pick up the food in a Boo shirt and Mario baseball cap. I heard them talking about Mario’s last name being Mario and Luigi’s last name being the same. Anyway, I went over to pick up the order, they noticed my clothes, and started laughing. Good times. Anyway, I like using character names.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Because people who have no real friends think it’s more “personal” to force a stranger to poorly read their name.

  • Lembot_0005@lemy.lol
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    57
    ·
    1 day ago

    Envy: in my native languages every letter means one concrete sound no matter of the word or any other circumstances. I can pronounce correctly any word I see written, and can correctly write down whatever word I hear even if I hear it for the first time and don’t know its meaning.

    • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      1 day ago

      Same (with few exceptions that are well documented and always applicable to every situation)

      But names are still fucked, because they’re not translated. Example:

      • Tomass
      • Tomas
      • Thomas
      • Tuomas

      Or the Shawn/Sean example in the comic

    • vateso5074@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      I’m envious of that, to be honest. Non-phonetic spelling is one of the greatest barriers to learning a language like English.

      Part of the problem though is what this comic highlights, where English does not often try to adapt names and loanwords to its own phonetics. They are transliterated to the Latin alphabet in ways that make sense for the logic of the source language, and then just carried into English.

      And then it just happens that the history of the English language is characterized by the number of times Britain was invaded by speakers of other languages that just merged into the lexicon, so English is riddled with loanwords that are each informed by the logic of their languages of origin.

        • MrSmith@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          15 hours ago

          Nah Italians have letters that have different sounds depending on where they are placed. Don’t think that matches the description. Double letters as well.

          • Eq0@literature.cafe
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            4 hours ago

            The rules are strict on the relationship between writing and pronunciation, so you still know how to spell something

            • MrSmith@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              4 hours ago

              You don’t know which rule to use when you hear the word pronounced.

              It does work the other way around.

              Ukrainian or Lithuanian languages, for example, are written exactly how they are pronounced (excepr for the emphasis, but you can write with emphasis included)

              There would never be confusion between “anuses” and “years”.

    • Yondoza@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      The Ethiopian alphabet (abougida) has this feature, but it goes one step further. Every vowel consonant pair (aka every syllable) has it’s own symbol. That sounds like a lot of symbols, and it is, but the beauty of it is that the vowel sounds are just modifiers of the consonant. So you only have to memorize the consonant symbols and the modifiers and you can reduce drastically reduce the number of letters needed plus have a completely phonetic writing system.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Does your language still have different regional accents or does that end up getting smoothed/averaged out by the writing system?

      • Lembot_0005@lemy.lol
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        23 hours ago

        It has. Some regions use local words that aren’t included in official vocabulary plus they love to misplace emphasis (we don’t mark it in written form). Not sure if it can be called “accent” though, more like “dialect”.

    • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 hours ago

      If you’re curious: ‘Se’ in Irish is a ‘Sh’ sound. But technically just ‘Sean’ is ‘Shan’, which is the word for ‘old’. There has to be an accent mark to make it proper and a name.

      ‘Seàn’ is the name, as ‘Shawn’.

      ‘Sèan’ is ‘Shane’.

      • remote_control_conor@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        47 minutes ago

        The Irish accent goes the other way.

        Seán is anim dom: My name is Shaun/Shawn/Shaughan/Whatever other spelling pleases your eye or ear.

        Translated to English, Seán is John.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      One of my coworkers is named Sean and I always refer to him as Seen. It is very funny to nobody except for me.