[BurningFrog]

English is the universal aviation language.

In other contexts there is no such language, and I can see how the politics of which and how many languages we should include in our car messages may well result in a "let's just use beeps" decision.

[dwroberts]

They have to supply written documentation in an appropriate language too, I don’t think it would be that difficult for it to have a voice language pack to match.

[hahajk]

You're talking about an industry that gives you a generic "check engine" light and allows dealerships to charge you $100 just to read you the error message.

I don't have any faith that they have the wherewithal to make any common sense design choices about error states.

[WalterBright]

You cannot look up "beep" in the manual when you have 40 beeps.

You are not objectively worse off with a word than a beep, even if you do not understand the word.

Driving a car with beeps and chimes and dings means they all mush together and get ignored.

[mcmoor]

Feels like it'd be easier to differentiate jingles compared to different words of a language you don't know. You can vary intonations etc, but by that point you're back to jingles.

[WalterBright]

I've been in foreign countries with languages I don't have any knowledge of. Learning 3 words is not a problem, and is kind of fun. Usually, I learn yes, no, please and thank you. Those words will get you amazingly far!

Maybe some people think R2D2 beeps and chirps are better, but sorry, I have no interest in learning the binary language of vaporators.

[dkdbejwi383]

Then I just have to learn to read sheet music to figure out what each specific tune means

[tremon]

How are you going to look up a jingle in the manual? Should they be sorted by pitch or by tempo?

[mcmoor]

Yeah I guess this is a legit problem, but also applies to foreign language warnings. Especially ones who have manual written in foreign glyphs.

[RugnirViking]

for the already very niche case of ending up behind the wheel of a foreign car that you can't just set to your language, you can still at least ask any literate foreigner to help. (they don't have to be a mechanic to debug "put hands on wheel"). Presumably there will be some around if you somehow acquired a foreign car with no help.

[WalterBright]

Icons are worse than foreign glyphs because how are you going to look up an icon?