Comment by BurningFrog

1 day ago

English is the universal aviation language.

In other contexts there is no such language, and I can see how the politics of which and how many languages we should include in our car messages may well result in a "let's just use beeps" decision.

10 comments

BurningFrog

Reply
dwroberts  1 day ago

They have to supply written documentation in an appropriate language too, I don’t think it would be that difficult for it to have a voice language pack to match.

  • hahajk  1 day ago

    You're talking about an industry that gives you a generic "check engine" light and allows dealerships to charge you $100 just to read you the error message.

    I don't have any faith that they have the wherewithal to make any common sense design choices about error states.

WalterBright  1 day ago

You cannot look up "beep" in the manual when you have 40 beeps.

You are not objectively worse off with a word than a beep, even if you do not understand the word.

Driving a car with beeps and chimes and dings means they all mush together and get ignored.

  • mcmoor  16 hours ago

    Feels like it'd be easier to differentiate jingles compared to different words of a language you don't know. You can vary intonations etc, but by that point you're back to jingles.

    • WalterBright  15 hours ago

      I've been in foreign countries with languages I don't have any knowledge of. Learning 3 words is not a problem, and is kind of fun. Usually, I learn yes, no, please and thank you. Those words will get you amazingly far!

      Maybe some people think R2D2 beeps and chirps are better, but sorry, I have no interest in learning the binary language of vaporators.