Hacker News Reader

Comment by ben_h | Hacker News Reader

Yep, I was aware of that :)

I chose babushka because here in Australia at least, the nested Russian dolls are known as babushka dolls. (Also, Matryoshka is kind of already taken by the video container format http://www.matroska.org/).

And hey, I'm cool with babushka being a kindly grandmother that helps you remember things you've researched, as long as you explain them in its DSL first :)

View on HN

Little known fact, babushka also means butterfly in Russian (if you put the stress on a different syllable). So if you do not like the old lady as a marketing image you can always go with a pretty butterfly.

Hey, that's cool—pretty tempting to start using that reference retrospectively. Maybe a few canvas-animated butterflies on the website? :)

Cheers!

grandma and butterfly are different words in Russian. Listen http://tts.imtranslator.net/A3Xz

yes butterfly is technically babochka, but they sound the same to the english ear.

There's definitely a difference between CH and SH, even in English. The pronunciations are:

BAH - bush - ka: grandma

BAH - botch - ka: butterfly

I am currently teaching Russian to my wife, and the things she says sound the same continually surprise me :)

There's no "technically" about it. That's just what the word means. It's irrelevant how similar they sound to the English ear; you might as well argue that "the" is interchangeable with "duh".

Also, contrary to the GP, there's no difference in stress, which is on the first syllable in both words. The reason they're different words is that "sh" vs. "ch" is a phonemic distinction in Russian, just as it is in English. That's why we distinguish between "sheep" and "cheep", for example, and would regard it as bizarre to conflate them.

Maybe they can go for a near-homonym pun? A nested grandmother doll with butterfly wings?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com