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Comment by pweissbrod | Hacker News Reader

[For Mr. Hutagt, providing people with an easy, free system to be found is “one of the more common, basic human rights.”]

I'm curious how useful three random mid-level english words are to a common mongolian nomad as a navigation system

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It supports Mongolian and other languages with a separate dictionary (http://what3words.com/ top right you can select a language)

Yeah, tried it (see my other comment in the thread). So, assuming I live at kicks.pasta.steer and someone in Mongolia wants to write me should he use:

kicks.pasta.steer or хуучныг.зүүлт.суурилах or ones.necklace.based-on or цохилтын чадваруудаар.гоймон.чиглэх ?

I'd guess same with existing addresses (street name, city name, country name): you write what the local postman can best read. In the API the language parameter is optional so I'd say whatever system/app/website translates it to coordinates both languages work.

Maybe the three word code is localize to the Mongol language (the article mentioned what3words adding support for the language).

I'm also curious about how many nomadic people have smartphones with a data plan to be able to generate their address.

Probably more have smart phones than we would expect but not enough to justify this.

Edit: in fact if they all have smartphones you might as well just use gps coords

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