How Livemocha Got Its Name

I’ve been researching the rise of online education for a project I’m working on. One of the companies in this growing field has a name that fits nicely into this week’s Life-or-Death theme: Livemocha.

 

 

Livemocha was founded in 2007 to bring language learning to a global audience. It currently offers courses in 38 languages, including Arabic, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Indonesian, Hebrew, and Turkish. Fees start at about $10 per course; students come from “every country in the world.” The website is elegantly designed, informative, and welcoming.

I originally encountered the Livemocha name out of context, and nothing about it suggested “education” or “language learning” to me. I was uncertain about the pronunciation: did “live” have a short vowel (suggesting an imperative verb) or a long one (suggesting “alive”)? Was “mocha” pronounced with a /k/ in the middle, like the color/coffee drink/city in Yemen; or phonetically, as in “cha-cha-cha”?

So I emailed the company to get the name story. The gracious reply came from Kira Fickensher, Livemocha’s community manager:

Livemocha is 2 parts: Live and Mocha. Live is pronounced lahyv as in “live broadcast” (the adverb/adjective form of the word). It represents live learning, live conversation, live practice - everything language learning should be. Self-study and online learning are such an essential evolution for language learning, because they are far more accessible and practical than traditional methods. But these need not exclude human interaction and immersion. Our approach of using social networking to reduce the barriers of distance actually bring [sic] live practice and immediate feedback into the act of self-study.

The second part of Livemocha is mocha, pronounced like the coffee drink. This is both a nod to our hometown of Seattle, which is known for its coffee culture, and a way of incorporating the ambience and sentiment of a coffee shop, where you can both study by yourself with a laptop or chat with a friend.

I’m glad the company gave this much thought to the name story; too many businesses with puzzling names default to “It’s just a name” or “It’s something our PR agency dreamed up.” And I’m happy to see those positive associations: “live learning” plus “sociable setting.”

But I’m a native English speaker. I wonder how well those meanings translate to a native speaker of, say, Mandarin Chinese (one of the top 10 languages spoken by Livemocha members). The pronunciation isn’t transparent, either: The short I, the ambiguous CH, and the V—pronounced B or W in various languages—could be confounding. Would a native Spanish speaker with no knowledge of English pronunciation be tempted to pronounce the name Lee-bay-MO-tcha?

Then there’s the leap required to get from “Livemocha” to “language learning.” The tagline—“Creating a World without Barriers”—is of only limited help: It could apply to a concert (think Live Aid or LiveNation), an international philanthropy (think Doctors without Borders), or a campaign for wheelchair access. I’m not saying the name and tagline need to be descriptive or pedestrian, but they should provide a clue about what’s being offered here.

My grade for the Livemocha name: B-minus. It’s distinctive and evocative if you speak English, and easy enough to pronounce once you see the word split. (The cursive treatment of the logo makes it a little clearer; an intercap M or a space between the words would be even better.) But it’s an oddly challenging choice for a global brand that focuses on cross-border fluency. It makes me wonder about the thoroughness of the pre-launch linguistic screening.

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Previously on Life-or-Death Week: Thanatourism, Death to Branding, Lifelike, Unleash Deadly.

 

Comments

[Licia]

Here’s some input from a non-native speaker. I am Italian and I was not familiar with the name Livemocha. Out of context, I might have thought of some kind of programming language / platform (because of Java and the Java decompiler), but not of any type of language-related service. I think most Italians would pronounce “live” correctly – it is widely used internationally – but might be unfamiliar with the word mocha and might tentatively pronounce it /moka/, influenced by the Italian names moka (coffee maker) and moca (coffee variety).

I work in the software industry, where pre-launch linguistic screening are part of the so-called globalization reviews, aimed at determining if unlocalizabe product and service names, nonverbal messages and visual representations are acceptable in local markets. They require specific cultural competencies – the ability to recognize any characteristics that are peculiar to the language and culture of the source context, identify any implicit information contained in the source text and/or visual items, compare them with the cultural framework of the local market and determine if they carry across also into the target culture.

Although language professionals are usually well suited to provide meaningful contributions in this area, in my experience not all multilingual individuals are aware of the different types of cultural implications that might require attention. The review of English names is often limited to how easy it is to say them in a close approximation of the original pronunciation, but, as you point out above, it’s very important to consider how the name would sound if pronounced following the local language rules. For example, some product versions are called “lite” in American English, but if an Italian reads “lite” as if it were an Italian word, /lite/, it will mean “argument, fight” and give unwanted connotations to the product name. I heard from a Russian colleague that older Russians might read words in the Latin-alphabet, including English ones, by applying the German reading rules they learned at school, an additional scenario that needs to be taken into account for their market. Prosodic aspects should also be considered, e.g. Windows and Vista are two neutral-sounding words that Italians find very easy to say, however, when put together they tend to be pronounced /ˈwindouˈzvista/ and unfortunately “svista” /zvista/ in Italian means “mistake, oversight”.