Japan to put a small red Swedish house on the Moon Tokyo-headquartered company ispace announced on Thursday it is sending a tiny toy red Swedish house to the Moon. Why? Because we've hurled so much junk to the Moon already, why not a house? More likely, The Register assumes, money. ispace claims it's art. "The Moonhouse is an artistic and epic story that Mikael [Genberg] has …
Given that you can sell an inexistent sculpture for $18K, I'd say tha it is worth more if no one sees it, because f*** me if I understand modern art
"Same as we call it Sweden and not Sverige"
Not quite. Swedish and other languages have their own names for other nations and their capitals. For example "Moscow" in English, "Moskva" in Swedish.
But for cases when there's no established alternative, it would help if the correct letters were used.
Wikipedia: Västerås (/ˌvɛstərˈoʊs/ VEST-ər-OHSS, US also /-ˈɔːs/ -AWSS,[4][5][6][7] Swedish: [vɛstɛrˈoːs])
I am sick and tired of those letters and voices that don't exist in my language, but people are still insisting on putting them everywhere, expecting that everybody else will spend time searching the Internet for right pronunciation.
I prefer to have something close to how it would be pronounced, than to see it in original and don't know what to do with ä and å (assuming other letters are read like in my language)...
So "Vesteros" might be more accurate, so let's start the Games of Thrones :)
Btw, I also have letters specific to my language and alphabet in my name, but I don't force that on anybody...
It's a Swedish word. It should be spelled with the correct characters.
If you can't pronounce Swedish (and nobody expects you to be able to) then just make up your own sounds. Suggesting that the article's author should attempt to spell the name phonetically in English when they are unlikely to know how it should be pronounced is a terrible idea and would merely lead to even more ridiculous spellings which would be meaningless to everyone.
Your suggestion of "Vesteros" is incorrect. While your interpretation of "ä" as sounding like an English "e" in this context is correct, the Swedish character "å" is pronounced like the end of the English word "paw".
"Your suggestion of "Vesteros" is incorrect. While your interpretation of "ä" as sounding like an English "e" in this context is correct, the Swedish character "å" is pronounced like the end of the English word "paw"."
Everyone can check the pronounciation in the Wikipedia article about Västerås. There's even a (poorly recorded) sound bite.
It's a Swedish word. It should be spelled with the correct characters.
If you can't pronounce Swedish (and nobody expects you to be able to) then just make up your own sounds.
In that case, it's equally fine to use ASCII-only characters for letters that have diacritics. If you can't type "å" for instance, just make up your own.
"If you can't pronounce Swedish (and nobody expects you to be able to) then just make up your own sounds."
That was a problem I had in my youth when I read the Swedish Deodorant joke(*) in a rag mag(**). Wasn't funny, until somebody read it out to me.
(*) Customer: "I'd like to buy a deodorant". Swedish shopkeeper: "Roll on ball or Aerosol?"
(**) - a collection of (mostly) rude jokes printed on cheap paper and sold by students to raise money
> "It's a Swedish word. It should be spelled with the correct characters."
I fully agree, but how far do we take that?
Should we apply it to cyrillic characters? (many resemble latin characters but with completely different pronunciation)
How about chinese? Tamil? They probably need to be transliterated to stand any chance of being recognised, let alone pronounced.
There are accepted standards in publishing for romanising languages with Cyrillic or other non-western characters.
When there are accepted substitute names in English for other countries or their cities, then of course the substitute should be used.
Everyone is just fine with "Gothenburg" instead of "Göteborg", but when there isn't an accepted substitute, place names should be written as is.
The characters öäå are letters of the Swedish alphabet. They are not "accented versions" of o and a. If you don't use them, there's a risk of referring to a completely different place than the one you thought you were talking about. And as a previous commentard rightly pointed out, CTRL-C and CTRL-V are available to short cut having to type the Swedish characters.
This discussion isn't about (or shouldn't be about) any cultural elitism or ad-absurdium arguments, it's about the standards that El Reg and their journalists should be following when referring to unfamiliar place names and non-English languages in general. Writing "Vasteras" instead of "Västerås" is unprofessional.
I learned to cook from his deliciously illustrated Post-pub nosh neckfiller column, like the Swedish pyttipanna (but not the 1.5 MILLION SCOVILLE masala omelette!). I miss that most.
He's probably also have taken the time work into an article like this that it is the 25th Anniversary[*] of Moonbase Alpha shooting off into space on Sept 13th, 1999. Now THAT was a "house" on the Moon :-)
* the date it was set in, not the broadcast date, obviously :-)
"Or an entire Tesla."
That was in incredible marketing stunt though, whatever you may think of the twat personally. It had people talking about space for weeks, even months afterwards who otherwise had little to no interest in the subject. And it could have just as easily been an unremarkable lump of concrete as a test mass and no one but those already interested would have even noticed the launch.
It'll be a white house soon enough after (as Pascal Monett noted) all those unfiltered UV rays have bleached it of its Communist-coloured tendencies.
How much more seriously can you work on the idea "I would like to put a tiny little house on the moon"? Did he spend a decade agonising about which shade of red to use? Chimney or no chimney?
Frankly, it's a boring idea. I would have sent a model Moonbase Alpha complete with Eagle transporter.
Staying there for a while would probably give you one emotion stronger than any other.
Happiness. I'm increasingly of the opinion that humans suck.
Longing to go home.
Longing for a decent cuppa. I can imagine that the lack of atmosphere and low gravity would present serious challenges regarding brewing a perfect tea.
Adding to the space pollution because "everyone is doing it" the is worst rationalization! So where is the line of acceptability with "everyone is doing it" mentality? Should littering, water and air pollution be allowed since the planet is already polluted and cluttered? Robbery, shoplifting, vandalism, computer hacking, identify theft and shootings are all happening quite regularly now days. Do we accept these actions as okay because "everyone is doing it"?
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