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

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[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Do you think Flohmarkt is worse than Volkswagen?

[–] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Miaou@jlai.lu 1 points 57 minutes ago

I'd bet a lot of money the average English speaker pronounces Volkswagen with a "vee" at the beginning