And if so, how do they label headphones, contact lenses etc?

  • KubrickFR@ttrpg.network
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    61
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    In French it’s Gauche and Droite so no problem here, but every product is labeled L&R because we live in a global market and English is clearly the dominating language. Most consumer product are made in China for the entire world so my guess is everybody understands L&R at this point.

    • Chariotwheel@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Also, at this point, it might just ingrained in people there is a L-side and a R-side which correspond with their equivalent of left and right even without knowing English. It can be abstracted as consistent symbols if nothing else.

      • xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        48
        ·
        1 year ago

        Now the question becomes, is there a language where the word for “left” starts with R and “right” starts with L?

  • papaya@possumpat.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    57
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Indonesian does; kiri (left) and kanan (right). “Ki” and “Ka” are usually used in texts (e.g., for captions in newspaper/magazine articles), but for headphones, contact lenses, etc it’s normally just L/R.

    • OpenHammer6677@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      We use English for almost everything tbh.

      Hindi ko nga naisip yung Kaliwa Kanan kung di ko pa nabasa itong comment lmao my English speaking brain

  • catreadingabook@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    26
    ·
    1 year ago

    Most people in first world countries will probably understand ‘L’ and ‘R’ anyway. But hypothetically, the problem could probably be solved by adding another letter, the same way we know that ‘T’ is for ‘Tuesday’ and ‘Th’ is for ‘Thursday.’

    • Acamon@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      I work with a lot of nonnative English speakers, and someone sent out an invite to a meeting on Thueisday and my brain melted.

    • Beemo Dinosaurierfuß@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      the same way we know that ‘T’ is for ‘Tuesday’ and ‘Th’ is for ‘Thursday.’

      As a non native speaker I have to admit I actually didn’t know that.
      But in German you also use two letters for all the weekdays.
      Mo, Di, Mi, Do, Fr, Sa, So.

      But it is a popular riddle for children to ask M, D, M, D, what comes next?

  • allywilson@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Chinese I think?

    • Left - Zuǒbiān
    • Right - zhèngquè de

    Not sure if that counts, considering it’s using the Latin alphabet and the language is tonal, etc.

    EDIT: and Ilocano:

    • Left - kannigid
    • Right - kusto

    EDIT2: and Indonesian:

    • Left - kiri
    • Right - Kanan

    EDIT3: and Irish:

    • Left - chlé
    • Right - ceart

    Going to stop now. I’m literally just choosing languages in google translate.

    • Nefrayu@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      48
      ·
      1 year ago

      Ah the dangers of Google translate and synonyms. You got the wrong definition for right when translating to Irish, the one you have means correct, deis is the word for right (direction). Clé is left, the h appears in certain contexts for grammatical reasons.

        • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Sorta the concept behind Twisted Translations, previously known as Google Translate Sings. Though they are intentionally getting a bad result by feeding the Translations through several languages before coming back to English.

      • Thavron@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Amazingly, the Dutch version of SharePoint has made this mistake. There is an option, I believe when making columns on a page or something, for “Links” (left) and “Goed” (right/correct).

    • ylph@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      1 year ago

      Chinese is also not right - 正确的 (zhèngquè de) means “proper”

      Left and Right as the sides are 左 (zuǒ) and 右 (yòu) - you can also add 邊 (biān) to each which means “side” to be more explicit, but they are also used separately in many contexts where the left/right meaning is needed.

      The Chinese characters for 左 and 右 actually originated as pictograms of the left and right hand in the early forms of Chinese writing, but later forms both contain general “hand” component (𠂇) with components 工 and 口 added for differentiation

    • ZapSNH@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      There’s also Filipino:

      • left - kaliwa
      • right - kanan

      also we use L and R for things because we speak English too.

  • Send_me_nude_girls@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    1 year ago

    I like this question because I haven’t found an AI answer this question correctly yet. They all give wrong answers.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s because of the way an LLM works, they’re completely blind to things like what a word starts with. Ask it something like “List 10 words that start and end with the same letter but are not palindromes.” and it completely shits the bed, because it can only process words as unified tokens, it can’t look inside the words to see how they’re structured.

      • Linus_Torvalds@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago
        1. Accordion
        2. Antenna
        3. Banana
        4. Character
        5. Deceived
        6. Elephant
        7. Greening
        8. Harbinger
        9. Insignia
        10. Knowledge

        GPT-4, prompt: “List 10 words that start and end with the same letter but are not palindromes.”

        Even without the palindrome condition, it got some of these and a few palindromes.

      • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        They don’t process words as unified tokens for something like an LLM, but they do process them as multi-letter encoding, like byte-pair encoding or more advanced techniques.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    1 year ago

    In Chinese/Japanese they may not necessarily start with the same letter but they look kind of similar:

    右 vs. 左, might mistake them if you aren’t wearing your contacts :P

  • Fondots@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    1 year ago

    Not exactly what you’re looking for, but in Esperanto the words for right and left are “Dekstre” and “Maldekstre” which roughly translates to something"right" and “anti-right” so while the first letter is different they both have the same root word, which is something I don’t think a lot of languages do in this case.

    As far as labeling headphones and such, it’s not really an issue since I don’t think anyone is making products with Esperantists in mind.

  • erusuoyera@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    I didn’t have to scroll too far in Google translate to find that Arabic for left and right is yasir and yamin (in the Latin alphabet, it’s يسار يمين in Arabic which seems to start with different characters anyway) but my guess is that things would be labeled with S and M.

    • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      1 year ago

      which seems to start with different characters anyway

      Remember that Arabic is right-to-left—both words start with ي (yeh).

    • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      which seems to start with different characters anyway

      It doesn’t - Arabic is written right-to-left, both words start with ⟨ي⟩ (it looks like ⟨ﻳ⟩ there).

    • Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      It’s yasar and yamin and yes, they both start with the same letter but alternatively you can use chamal ( north) for left. It’s archaic and rarely if ever used in modern days but it fix this problem that isn’t one in the first place because you can print the whole word since their shape alone allow for an easy and fast identification, use the left right symbols with a tilted tail or just use L&R for arabic nations with English as the main foreign language and G&D for the ones where it’s french.

    • Deebster@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Levantine Arabic says shamal شمال but that’s might be too slangy for labelling.

      • mcmoor@bookwormstory.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Only Levantine? Al Qur’an seems to prefer شمال for left so I thought that’s what will be in MSA. I have never heard يسار for left before.

        • Deebster@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t know, to be honest - I’m no expert, I just learnt some Arabic whilst living in Jordan.

  • Lvxferre@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Depending on the language I wouldn’t be surprised if they annotated it as D[exter] and S[inister] and called it a day.