Comment by 0xbadcafebee
19 hours ago
Japanese appliances play unique tunes in order to avoid beep confusion and reduce user annoyance. A tune is also more easily distinguished from voice if you don't speak the language. Western appliances have slowly started doing the same. (https://www.gearpatrol.com/home/a45038903/singing-appliances...)
I don't want tunes. I want a voice. It is not any harder to learn 3 Japanese words than 3 random tunes. You don't have to learn Japanese. It's 3 words.
It's the same thing as those stupid icons on buttons. The rationale is that some pre-contact tribesman will have a car and not know English. Well, he isn't going to know what the ancient Mesopotamian oil lamp icon is, either. And learning 3 English words is not a tragedy. At least the words can be looked up. The icons (and beeps) cannot.
Many Japanese appliances actually do speak, but you'd probably have a hard time troubleshooting them.
One day the normal sounds you're used to don't happen, and instead you hear "Kyūshi torei de kami ga tsumatte imasu." So you try to find a manual to understand what it means, and the manual has a Japanese section ("給紙トレイで紙が詰まっています。") and an English section ("The paper loader is jammed."). How do you know that the sound you heard ("Kyūshi torei de kami ga tsumatte imasu") means "The paper loader is jammed" unless you already read and speak Japanese? One way to figure it out would be... icons.
My point was the speech should say "jam" (in Japanese) and it will be better than a beep and an the text "jam" (in Japanese) is better than an icon.
My old truck had a lever that had 3 positions: COOL HEAT DEFROST. Modern cars have all these idiotic icons and I can never figure out how to defrost.
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